li 


Jf  '  ••* 


LIBRARY     | 

UMtvtftsmr  or 

CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO     J 


Man  surrounded  by  his  Poor  Relations. 


OUR   POOR   RELATIONS. 


A  PHILOZOIC  ESS  A  Y 


BY 


COLONEL    E.    B.    HAM  LEY. 


WITH     ILLUSTRATIONS 
CHIEFLY     BY     ERNEST     GRISET. 


BOSTON: 
J.    E.    TILTON     AND     COMPANY. 

1872. 


what  this  world  would  be  like  if  inhabited  by  no 
other  animal  but  man  ? — the  earth  without  its 

5 


6  Our  Poor  Relations. 

four-footed  and  its  creeping  things,  the  sea  and 
the  river  vacant  of  their  shy  silvery  gleams  and 
far-darting  shadows,  the  air  void  of  the  choral 
hum  of  insects  and  the  song  of  birds  ?  What 
a  dismal  hush  in  creation  !  what  a  multitudi- 
nous charm  and  delight  wanting  to  the  woods, 
the  fields,  the  shallows,  and  the  deeps  !  What 
glory  lost  to  the  grass  with  the  spotted  lady- 
birds, the  mail-clad  beetles,  and  the  slender 
grasshoppers !  What  splendor  gone  from  the 
flower  with  the  bronzed  and  fire-tipped  bee  that 
fed  on  its  heart,  and  the  painted  butterfly  that 
hovered  above  its  petals  !  How  dull  had  been 
Eden  for  Adam  with  nothing  breathing  but 
Eve,  and  all  the  rest  of  creation  inanimate  — 
no  voice  but  that  of  the  wind  or  the  thunder  — 
no  motion  but  the  flow  of  the  stream,  the  float- 
ing of  the  clouds,  the  waving  of  the  trees  ! 
The  earth  would  have  been  silent  as  a  picture  ; 
the  forest  and  the  plain,  the  mountain  and  the 
lake,  forlorn,  tremendous,  insupportable  soli- 
tudes —  solitudes  that  none  would  have  sought, 
since  there  could  have  been  neither  hunters  nor 
fishers,  herdsmen  nor  shepherds. 

In  far  other  measure  has  the  gift  of  life  been 
poured  forth  upon  the  earth.     All  the  genera- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  7 

tions  of  all  the  tribes  of  men  are  but  a  handful 
to  the  myriads  of  creatures  which  to-day,  to- 
morrow, and  every  day,  haunt  land,  air,  and 
water,  till  inanimate  nature  teems  with  the  sen- 
tient vitality  that  lends  it  all  its  interest  and  all 
its  significance.  A  leaf  holds  a  family,  a  clod 
a  community,  and  there  is  material  for  the  spec- 
ulations of  a  lifetime  in  the  tenants  of  the 
neighboring  meadow,  and  of  the  brook  that 
waters  it.  The  unclouded  heavens  would  be 
oppressive  in  their  vastness  and  loneliness  but 
for  those  frequent  travellers  high  in  air,  the 
rook,  the  raven,  or  rarer  heron,  that  flap  their 
untiring  way  onwards  till  they  melt  again  into 
the  blue  depths  out  of  which  they  grew  upon 
the  sight.  The  bare  white  cliffs  are  no  longer 
barren  when  their  clangorous  population  of 
chough  and  kittiwake  and  daw  are  abroad  in 
the  sunshine  ;  and  the  black  storm-cloud,  com- 
ing up  on  the  blast  behind  its  veil  of  rain,  gains 
a  beauty  which  before  it  had  not,  as  it  throws 
into  relief  the  white  wing  of  the  sea-gull.  Nay, 
in  some  countries  where  calm  and  sunshine  are 
more  permanent  conditions  of  the  atmosphere 
than  here,  we  learn  that  the  regions  of  air  are 
not  only  a  highway,  but  a  home.  Sir  Samuel 


8  Our  Poor  Relations. 

Baker  observes  that  when  an  animal  is  slain  in 
the  Nubian  wilderness,  within  a  few  seconds  a 
succession  of  birds,  hitherto  invisible,  descend 
on  the  prey,  and  always  in  the  same  order. 
First  the  black-and-white  crow  arrives,  then  the 
buzzard,  then  the  small  vulture,  then  the  large 
vulture,  lastly  the  marabout  stork.  "  I  believe," 
says  Sir  Samuel,  "  that  every  species  keeps  to 
its  own  particular  elevation,  and  that  the  atmos- 
phere contains  regular  strata  of  birds  of  prey, 
who,  invisible  to  the  human  eye  at  their  enor- 
mous height,  are  constantly  resting  upon  their 
widespread  wings  and  soaring  in  circles,  watch- 
ing with  telescopic  sight  the  world  beneath." 
It  is  like  a  tale  born  of  Persian  or  Arabian  fan- 
tasy to  hear  that  above  the  traveller  in  the 
desert  hangs  a  huge  mansion,  "  impalpable  to 
feeling  as  to  sight,"  with  its  basement,  its  first 
and  second  floors,  its  attics,  and  its  turrets  ;  or 
(to  vary  the  image)  that  the  social  system  of  the 
atmosphere  comprises  its  lower  orders,  its  mid- 
dle classes,  and  its  upper  ten  thousand. 

It  is  a  pleasant,  if  somewhat  extravagant, 
fancy,  to  figure  to  one's  self  man  dwelling  amid 
his  fellow-tenants  of  the  earth  in  completest 
harmony,  the  friend  and  companion  of  some, 


Our  Poor  Relations.  9 

the  protector  of  others,  the  harmer  of  none,  the 
intelligent  observer  of  all.  Who  shall  say  what 
new  unforeseen  relations  might  not  have  been 
established  between  us  and  our  humble  friends 
on  this  basis  of  confidence  and  affection  ?  Who 
shall  say  that  they  might  not  have  revealed  to 
us  that  secret  which  they  have  guarded  since 
the  creation  —  the  secret  of  their  instincts  and 
their  ways  ;  what  their  notions  are  of  the 
world,  of  each  other,  and  of  man  ;  and  how  far 
they  look  before  and  after  ?  It  was  one  of 
Hawthorne's  prettiest  wild  fancies,  that  Dona- 
tello,  the  descendant  of  the  old  Fauns,  and  the 
partial  inheritor  of  their  sylvan  nature,  still 
held  kinship  with  the  untamed  creatures  of  the 
woods,  and  could  draw  them  into  communion 
with  him  by  the  peculiar  charm  of  his  voice. 
Every  one  who  has  domesticated  some  strange, 
shy  creature  can  testify  to  the  wealth  of  char- 
acter which  it  came  to  display  in  the  ripening 
warmth  of  intimacy  ;  and  several  naturalists 
(by  which  term  we  are  far  from  intending  to 
signify  the  dissectors  of  frogs,  the  scientific  ex- 
perimenters on  the  nerves  and  muscles  of  dogs, 
or  the  impalers  of  beetles  and  butterflies)  have 
recorded  their  pleasant  experiences  of  these 


IO  Our  Poor  Relations. 

connections.  Thus  one  of  them,  in  spite  of 
ancient  prejudice  and  proverbial  adjectives,  has 
elicited  fine  social  qualities  in  a  bear ;  another 
has  owned  a  beaver  of  such  intelligence  that  it 
might  almost  have  been  persuaded  to  become  a 
Christian  ;  while  Caroline  Bowles,  whose  taste 
in  this  particular  we  respect  rather  than  like, 
kept  a  toad  (a  practice  which  we  had  thought 
to  be  peculiar  to  old  ladies  who  are  in  league 
with  the  devil),  and  grew  so  fond  of  the  un- 
promising associate  as  to  celebrate  its  virtues 
in  verse.  What  diversity  and  distinctness  of 
character  in  the  poet  Cowper's  three  hares  ! 
Could  any  amount  of  hare-soup,  civet  de  lievre, 
jugged  hare,  or  roast  hare,  that  ever  figured  at 
a  century  of  city  feasts,  have  made  amends  to 
the  world  for  the  want  of  the  affectionate  record 
of  their  social  qualities  ?  Yet  many  a  Puss, 
Tiney,  and  Bess,  as  full  of  whim  and  play  and 
individuality  as  they,  perishes  unappreciated  in 
every  day  of  cover-shooting,  or  is  run  into,  in 
the  open,  by  heartless  and  undiscriminating 
beagles.  Especially  in  their  early  youth  are 
the  four-footed  peoples  lovely  and  of  good  re- 
port :  not  to  mention  such  obvious  examples  as 
the  soft  graces  of  kittens,  the  pretty,  stiff  frisk- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  1 1 

ings  of  lambs,  like  toys  in  motion  (all  the  lamb 
family  are  as  full  of  quaint  fun  as  Charles  him- 
self), and  the  clumsy  geniality  of  puppies,  the 
rule  will  be  found  elsewhere  of  pretty  general 
application.  Young  pigs  are  delightful  —  their 
gambols,  and  squeaky  grunts,  and  pokings  in 
the  straw,  and  relations  with  their  mother  and 
brethren,  are  marked  with  a  grave  facetiousness 
all  their  own,  though  the  spectator  who  would 
enjoy  them  must  be  careful  to  ignore  the  sensual 
aldermanic  life  of  the  mature  porker.  Young 
donkeys,  on  the  other  hand,  are  by  so  much  the 
more  charming,  as  being  invested  with  the  pa- 
thos (quite  awanting  to  the  pigling)  of  the  fu- 
ture hard  existence  that  is  pretty  certain  to 
await  each  member  of  the  race  as  a  poor  man's 
drudge.  Foxes,  in  private  life,  and  apart  from 
their  public  merits  as  main  supporters  of  a  great 
national  institution,  are  full  of  estimable  quali- 
ties, as  many  a  poacher  who,  watching  for  other 
game,  has  noted  Mrs.  Reynard  unbending  in 
the  moonlight  with  her  young  family,  might  tes- 
tify ;  and  a  little  fox,  with  his  face  full  of  a 
grave,  sweet  intelligence,  which  is  as  yet  unde- 
based  by  the  look  of  worldly  astuteness  con- 
spicuous in  after  life,  is  one  of  the  prettiest 


12  Our  Poor  Relations. 

sights  in  the  world.  Domesticated,  they  de- 
velop, in  addition  to  their  native  sagacity,  a 
most  affectionate  attachment  to  those  who  are 
kind  to  them  ;  and  though,  owing  to  personal 
peculiarities,  their  society  is  most  agreeable 
when  the  visitor  approaches  them  from  wind- 
ward, yet  acquaintance  with  a  fox  will  always 
repay  cultivation.  Going  further  afield  for  ex- 
amples of  unobtrusive  merit,  what  a  wealth  of 
humor  is  comprised  in  the  phrase,  "  a  wilderness 
of  monkeys  ! "  What  endless  fun,  what  fresh 
comedy,  what  brilliant  farce,  what  infinity  of 
by-play  and  private  jesting,  quite  beyond  the 
reach  of  our  most  popular  comedians,  is  being 
forever  enacted  in  those  leafy  .theatres  where 
they  hold  their  untiring  revels !  How  little  are 
they  dependent  on  the  stimulus  of  a  sympa- 
thetic audience,  how  free  from  the  vulgarity  of 
playing  at  the  gallery,  how  careless  about  split- 
ting the  ears  of  the  groundlings,  how  careful 
always  to  hold  the  mirror  up  to  nature  and  to 
man !  Hamlet  could  have  given  them  no  ad- 
vice that  would  have  been  of  service ;  on  the 
contrary,  they  would  have  been  spoiled  by  being 
"  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought,"  — 
a  metaphysical  monkey,  mooning  over  his  bar- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  13 

ren  philosophy,  would  sit  in  dismal  discord  with 
the  surrounding  fun.  Even  in  captivity  the 
merry  race  cultivate  the  drama,  and  the  audi- 
ences about  the  great  cages  in  the  Jardin  des 
Plantes  or  our  own  Zoological,  are  never  disap- 
pointed in  the  performance. 

It  was  on  a  Sunday  last  summer,  that  we 
witnessed,  in  the  monkey-house  in  the  Regent's 
Park,  a  piece,  the  serious  cast  of  which  was,  on 
Shakespearean  principles,  relieved  by  passages 
of  lighter  matter.  Perched  on  their  poles  en- 
gaged in  mutual  friendly  investigation,  or  swing- 
ing airily  on  ropes,  the  community  was  unusu- 
ally quiet,  while  a  female  monkey,  not  the  least 
of  whose  attractions  was  a  roseate  flush  which 
spread  itself  over  part  of  her  else  russet-gray 
person,  was  engaged  in  deep  flirtation  with  a 
cavalier  whose  nether-monkey  was  of  a  tender 
green  shading  into  gold.  The  impassioned  Ro- 
meo, chattering  voluble  protestations,  followed 
the  coy  but  loquacious  Juliet,  while  that  lasciva 
puella  pelted  him  in  retiring  with  orange-peel, 
nutshells,  and  straws,  till  they  arrived  beneath  a 
branch  along  which  lay  extended  another  mon- 
key, who  watched  the  pair  attentively.  He  may 
have  been  a  rival,  like  the  County  Paris,  or  a 


14  Our  Poor  Relations. 

dissatisfied  relative,  like  Tybalt,  or  possibly  he 
may  have  resented  as  an  injury  and  a  slight  any 
preference  of  other  attractions  to  his  own,  for 
he  presented  to  the  curious  eye  some  embellish- 
ments of  brilliant  azure.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
without  the  slightest  warning  he  dropped  like 
a  plummet  on  the  enamoured  pair,  and,  seizing 
Romeo,  bit  him  in  his  gorgeous  hinder  parts. 
The  injured  swain,  turning  with  an  appalling 
grin,  grappled  his  assailant ;  Juliet  fled  shriek- 
ing, and  her  outcries,  mingling  with  the  noise 
of  combat,  conveyed  the  tidings  of  the  strife  to 
all  the  cage,  and  "  spread  the  truth  from  pole  to 
pole."  Thereupon  all  the  other  monkeys,  leav- 
ing their  own  private  concerns,  vaulted  from 
rope  and  perch  towards  the  scene  of  action, 
where,  with  shrill  clamor,  they  precipitated 
themselves  on  the  combatants,  and  joined  in  a 
general  fray  ;  while  an  elderly  and  morose  ba- 
boon, delayed  by  age  and  infirmity,  arrived 
rather  later,  and,  armed  with  a  stick,  belabored 
all  indiscriminately  who  came  within  his  reach. 
Shortly  after,  we  beheld,  in  a  neighboring  cage, 
a  monkey,  of  dark,  attenuated  figure,  clinging 
with  hands  and  feet,  like  a  gigantic  hairy  spider, 
to  the  wire  roof,  apparently  absorbed  in  medita- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  15 

tion,  while  his  tail  hung  perpendicularly  down 
to  the  length  of  about  a  yard.  This,  appendage 
offered  irresistible  attractions  to  a  friend  upon 
a  neighboring  rope,  who,  after  long  and  earnest- 
ly surveying  it  as  he  swung,  reached  it  in  one 
wild  leap,  and,  grasping  it  with  both  hands,  pro- 
ceeded to  use  it  as  the  vehicle  of  an  animated 
gymnastic  performance.  The  sage  above,  no- 
ways discomposed,  slowly  turned  his  head,  and, 
after  a  patronizing  glance  at  the  pendent  acro- 
bat, resumed  the  thread  of  his  meditations. 
Possibly  this  was  intended  as  a  practical  illus- 
tration of  the  feat  known  to  logicians  as  "  jump- 
ing at  a  conclusion."  But  whether  grave  or 
gay,  the  charm  of  undomesticated  animals  is, 
that  they  show  us  their  nature  fresh  from  the 
fashioner,  unmodified  by  education,  or  the  opin- 
ion of  others,  or  any  influence  which  might 
make  them  wish  to  seem  other  than  they  are  ; 
and  they  follow  their  sports,  their  matings,  the 
shaping  of  their  abodes,  their  parental  cares, 
the  purveying  of  their  food,  their  slumbers,  and 
flights  and  perambulations,  their  relations  to 
their  fellows,  whether  gregarious  or  solitary, 
with  absolute  independence  of  all  impulses  ex- 
cept those  which  inspired  the  first  of  their  race. 


i6 


Our  Poor  Relations. 


The  idea  of  a  paradise  of  animals  who  move 
without  fear  round  the  central  figure  of  man,  is 
not  altogether  fanciful,  for  something  like  it  has 
been  witnessed  from  time  to  time  by  lost  crews, 
or  storm-driven  mariners,  who  reach,  Crusoe- 
like,  a  haven  in  some  hitherto  unexplored  prov- 
ince of  Ocean.  Birds  of  strange  plumage  come 
out  to  welcome  the  solitary  figure  in  the  boat,  to 
perch  on  the  prow,  and  to  herald  its  progress  ; 
it  nears  the  shore  of  the  far  antarctic  region, 


amid  a  crowd  of  gamesome  seals,  like  the  car 
of  Amphitrite   conducted  by  a   procession  of 


Our  Poor  Relations.  17 

Tritons.  On  the  sands  sit  sea-lions,  gazing 
with  their  solemn  eyes  at  man,  like  conscript 
fathers  receiving  a  foreign  envoy ;  penguins 
waddle  in  his  path  ;  the  greater  and  lesser  alba- 
tross come  floating  by,  turning  a  bright,  fearless 
glance  on  him.  Or,  in  warmer  regions,  dolphins 
are  his  avant  couriers  ;  at  his  approach,  turtles 
broad  of  back  scarce  quit  their  eggs  in  the  sand 
to  crawl  into  the  water  ;  the  gaudy  parrots,  and 
creamy,  crested  cockatoos,  scream  inquiry,  not 
indignation,  from  the  branches  ;  the  woodpeck- 
er scarce  pauses  in  his  tapping ;  the  shining 
dove  .  ceases  not  to  woo  his  mate  ;  the  apes 
chatter  a  welcome,  and  grin  not  less  affably 
than  many  a  host  and  hostess  who  desire  to 
give  the  guest  a  hospitable  reception.  We 
have  ourselves,  in  the  depths  of  Canadian  for- 
ests, amid  pines  "  hidden  to  the  knees "  in 
snow,  seen  the  white  hare  pause  to  look  at  us, 
as  she  hopped  past  a  few  yards  off ;  the  tree- 
grouse,  glancing  downward  from  a  branch  close 
by  with  an  air  of  courteous  inquiry ;  and  the 
spruce-partridges  never  disturbing  the  order  in 
which  they  sat  on  the  boughs,  as  our  snow- 
shoes  crunched  the  crisp  surface  underneath  — 
a  confidence  but  ill  requited  ;  for  an  Indian, 


1 8  Our  Poor  Relations. 

who  guided  us  in  those  trackless  woods,  ascend- 
ing the  tree,  and  beginning  with  the  bird  that 
sat  lowest,  plucked  off,  by  means  of  a  stick  and 
a  noose,  several  in  succession,  passing  the  fatal 
loop  round  their  necks  with  a  skill  worthy  of 
Calcraft.  Not  to  us  does  this  kind  of  tameness 
seem  "  shocking,"  as  Cowper  thought  it  must 
have  seemed  to  lonely  Crusoe,  but  rather  de- 
lightful, because  proof  of  the  innocence  that 
imagines  no  evil ;  and  very  touching,  because 
it  betrays  the  simple  creature  which  one  might 
think  it  ought  to  protect. 

In  fact,  the  relations  between  man  and  his  co- 
tenants  of  the  globe  would  have  been  altogether 
delightful  but  for  one  unlucky  circumstance,  —  a 
circumstance  which,  far  from  being  inevitable  or 
natural,  is  one  of  the  insoluble  problems  of  the 
earth,  and  has  caused  a  terrible  jar  and  discord 
in  creation,  —  namely,  the  fact  that  one  animal 
is  food  for  another.  No  doubt,  as  matters  stand, 
beasts  and  birds  of  prey  must  follow  their  na- 
ture ;  the  tearing  of  flesh  and  the  picking  of 
bones  are  the  correlatives  of  fangs  and  grinders, 
beaks  and  talons  ;  and  the  comparative  anato- 
mist is  compelled  to  coincide  with  that  practical 
Yankee,  who,  being  told  that  in  the  days  of  the 


Our  Poor  Relations.  19 

millennium  the  lion  and  the  lamb  will  lie  down 
together,  said,  "  He  expected  the  lamb  would 
lie  down  inside  the  lion."  Nor  is  there  any 
sign  of  relaxation  in  the  vigor  with  which  man 
continues  to  devour  fish,  flesh,  and  fowl ;  and 
no  individual  human  stomach  reaches  maturity 
without  sacrificing  whole  hecatombs  of  victims 
by  the  way.  If  we  (the  present  writer)  were  to 
make  any  pretence  to  a  virtuous  distaste  for 
flesh,  we  should  justly  be  rebuked  by  the 
thought  of  all  the  slayings  and  cookings  that 
our  presence  in  the  world  has  caused  and  will 
yet  cause.  All  the  yet  unborn,  unlittered,  and 
unhatched  creatures  that  will  be  trussed  and 
jointed,  skewered,  basted,  roasted,  boiled,  grilled, 
and  served  up,  to  keep  our  single  soul  and  body 
together,  might  very  properly  low,  bleat,  grunt, 
gobble,  quack,  cackle,  and  chirp  us  the  lie  in 
our  throat.  In  particular  might  we  be  haunted 
and  humbled  by  the  memory  of  our  carnivo- 
rous desires  on  that  evening  when,  having 
toiled  all  day  on  foot  from  Martigny  up  the 
Great  St.  Bernard,  we  sat,  hungry  and  weary, 
a  solitary  guest,  with  one  sad  monk  for  host,  in 
the  huge  dining-hall  of  the  Hospice.  We  were 
hungry  with  the  hunger  of  those  snow-clad 


2O  Our  Poor  Relations. 

altitudes  ;  succulent  visions  of  stew  and  cutlet 
floated  before  our  fancy  ;  and  when  an  attend- 
ant bore  into  the  twilight-shadowed  hall  a  tray 
with  many  dishes,  we  blessed  the  pious  mem- 
ory of  the  sainted  Bernard.  Our  gratitude 
cooled  a  little  with  the  soup,  which  seemed 
to  be  compounded  of  grass  and  warm  water : 
the  remains  of  some  cold  pudding,  of  a  kind 
suitable  for  infants,  followed ;  then  some  slices 
of  potato  fried  in  oil ;  then  a  ragout  of  the 
green  products  of  the  Italian  ditches  ;  till  at 
length,  in  the  growing  darkness,  a  plate  was 
placed  before  us,  on  which  glimmered  some 
small  brown  patches  which  might  be  diminu- 
tive cutlets,  or  sliced-  kidneys,  or  possibly  bits 
of  baked  meat.  Into  the  nearest  we  plunged 
our  fork  —  shade  of  Dalgetty,  it  was  a  stewed 
prune  !  A  dried  apple,  we  believe,  concluded 
the  repast,  but  we  did  not  eat  it.  As  to  grace, 
Amen  stuck  in  our  throat  ;  and  we  had  rather 
not  repeat  the  epithets  which  we  breathed  to 
our  pillow  that  night  in  honor  of  the  canonized 
founder  of  the  feast.  Nor  among  our  gastro- 
nomic recollections  should  we  omit  the  time 
when,  on  a  foreign  strand,  where  we  had  sub- 
sisted for  some  days  chiefly  on  the  cabbages  of 


Our  Poor  Relations.  21 

the  country,  and  were  lying  sick  and  jaundiced 
and  void  of  all  desire  for  food,  in  our  tent,  we 
were  driven  by  some  strange  perverse  impulse 
to  devise  an  infinite  number  of  bills  of  fare,  com- 
posed of  the  choicest  viands,  to  be  partaken  by 
the  choicest  guests,  whenever  we  should  again 
sit  in  the  cheerful  warmth  of  a  certain  club  in 
Pall  Mall  ;  visions  since  in  great  part  realized.. 
When,  therefore,  we  argue  that  the  juxtaposi- 
tion of  the  words  "  animal  food  "  expresses  a 
disastrous  condition  of  our  existence,  the  can- 
did reader  will  understand  that  we  make  no  pre- 
tence to  have  discovered  an  alternative,  or  to 
be  exempt  from  the  common  misfortune. 

To  a  race  of  vegetarian  men  surrounded  by 
vegetarian  animals  —  herds  from  which  they 
demanded  only  milk,  flocks  whose  sole  tribute 
was  their  fleece,  and  poultry  which  supplied 
nothing  but  eggs  to  the  board  —  the  idea  of  de- 
priving creatures  of  life  in  order  to  eat  them 
would  probably  seem  monstrous  and  repulsive. 
But  custom  will  reconcile  us  to  anything  ;  the 
Fans  (an  unprejudiced  African  tribe)  feast  on 
their  nearest  relatives  with  as  little  disgust  as 
we  on  a  haunch  or  a  sirloin  ;  and  if  bills  of  fare 
prevailed  among  that  interesting  people,  a  rot 


22  Our  Poor  Relations. 

of  aged  grandfather,  an  entr&e  of  curried  aunt, 
or  sucking-nephew's  head  en  tortue,  would  be  as 
much  matters  of  course  as  our  ordinary  dishes. 
.But  notwithstanding  the  omnivorous  conforma- 
tion of  the  human  teeth,  and  the  all-assimila- 
tive faculty  of  the  human  stomach,  it  is  scarcely 
to  be  imagined  that  man,  placed  in  a  paradise 
of  roots  and  fruits,  herbs  and  grain,  honey  and 
spices,  milk  and  wine,  would  have  originated  of 
himself  the  idea  of  killing  and  eating  animals. 
He  may  have  been  first  corrupted  by  the  bad 
example  of  the  carnivora.  The  spectacle  of  a 
tiger  rending  a  kid,  or  an  eagle  a  pigeon,  may 
have  habituated  him  to  connect  the  ideas  of 
slaughter  and  food  ;  next,  his  imitative  propen- 
sities may  have  kindled  the  desire  to  perform 
the  process  himself ;  and,  the  imagination  thus 
depraved,  any  remaining  scruples  would  speed- 
ily vanish,  in  time  of  dearth,  before  the  impulse 
of  a  craving  stomach.  But  however  the  cus- 
tom may  have  arisen,  we  are  not  left  in  any 
doubt  as  to  the  dietary  habits  of  our  primeval 
ancestors.  The  earliest  trace  of  man  on  the 
earth  is  the  flint  weapon  with  which  he  slew 
the  bear,  the  deer,  and  the  beaver,  whose  bones 
strew  the  site  of  his  dwellings.  His  first  gar- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  23 

ments  were  torn  from  the  backs  they  grew 
on.  His  first  business  was  the  chase.  Natural 
philosophers  tell  us  that  a  habit,  accidental  at 
first,  grows,  in  the  course  of  transmission,  into 
the  nature,  and  becomes  a  characteristic.  It  was 
perhaps  in  this  way  that  the  germ  of  destruc- 
tiveness,  implanted  by  instant  and  ever-pressing 
necessity  in  the  aboriginal  breast,  struck  such 
deep  root,  that,  in  all  succeeding  ages,  every 
corner  of  the  inhabited  earth  has  been  a  sham- 
bles, and  the  rest  of  animated  creation  has  been 
compelled  to  accept  from  man  either  subjection 
or  persecution  —  persecution  often  pushed  even 
to  extermination.  In  the  pride  of  that  power 
which,  through  the  faculty  of  speech,  man  pos- 
sesses, of  combining  forces  and  transmitting 
knowledge,  he  has  exercised  ruthlessly  his  do- 
minion over  the  beast  of  the  field  and  the  fowl 
of  the  air.  Wherever  he  has  held  sway,  there 
have  all  other  creatures  drawn  their  painful 
breath  in  subjection,  unchampioned  and  unpit- 
ied.  If  in  that  imaginary  paradise  of  animals 
which  we  have  already  sketched,  we  simply  in- 
troduce the  figure  of  a  NATIVE,  the  whole  scene 
changes.  That  lean,  low-browed,  flat-nosed  car- 
icature of  humanity,  more  like  a  painter's  lay 


24  Our  Poor  Relations. 

figure  than  a  sculptor's  model  — full  of  propensi- 
ties much  viler  than  those  of  the  animals  around 
him  —  selfish,  remorseless,  faithless,  treacherous 
—  is  monarch  of  all  he  surveys.  The  birds  have 
learnt  the  power  of  the  poisoned  arrow  —  the 
beasts  have  a  wholesome  dread  of  the  ambush 
and  the  snare.  That  bronze-colored  being,  dis- 
tinguished from  the  ape  chiefly  by  superior  ma- 
levolence and  articulate  speech,  walks  surround- 
ed by  a  wide  circle  of  fear.  The  creatures 
around  him  have  learnt,  and  taught  their  young, 
the  lesson  that  he  is  as  malignant  as  he  is  pow- 
erful. Only  give  him  time,  and  he  will  depopu- 
late whole  regions  of  their  animals.  The  gigan- 
tic Moa  no  longer  stalks  over  the  hills  of  New 
Zealand.  The  moose  disappears  from  the  east 
of  the  American  continent  as  the  buffalo  from 
the  west.  South  Africa,  that  used  to  teem  with 
wild  herds,  crowding  the  wide  landscape  up  to 
the  horizon,  and  astounding  the  traveller  with 
the  magnificent  spectacle  of  tribes  of  antelopes, 
zebras,  and  giraffes  hiding  the  plain,  elephants 
and  rhinoceroses  browsing  securely  amid  the 
clumps  of  trees,  and  hippopotamuses  swarming 
in  the  rivers,  has,  since  the  negroes  were  sup- 
plied with  guns,  been  almost  swept  of  its  game, 


Our  Poor  Relations.  25 

and  in  some  parts  not  only  have  the  birds  dis- 
appeared, but  the  very  moles  and  mice  are  grow- 
ing scarce.  In  fact,  in  all  lands  the  savage  gluts 
himself  with  slaughter.  Nor  is  his  civilized 
brother  behind  him  in  the  propensity  to  destroy, 
which  nothing  but  the  interest  of  proprietorship 
avails  to  check.  Everywhere  it  is  absolutely  a 
capital  crime  to  be  an  unowned  creature.  Dar- 
win tells  us  that  "  when  the  Falkland  Islands 
were  first  visited  by  man,  the  large  wolf-like 
dog  (Canis  antarcticus}  fearlessly  came  to  meet 
Byron's  sailors,  who,  mistaking  their  ignorant 
curiosity  for  ferocity,  ran  into  the  water  to 
avoid  them  ;  even  recently,  a  man,  by  holding  a 
piece  of  meat  in  one  hand  and  a  knife  in  the 
other,  could  sometimes  stick  them  at  night." 
Beautiful  attitude  of  humanity  !  In  those  parts 
of  America  where  game-laws  do  not  exist,  the 
game  has  almost  disappeared  ;  in  France  the 
small  birds  have  been  destroyed,  to  the  great  joy 
and  prosperity  of  the  insects  and  caterpillars  ;  in 
England  the  interests  of  game-preserving  have 
proscribed  the  owl,  the  falcon,  the  eagle,  the 
weasel,  and  a  host  of  other  tenants  of  the  woods. 
Generations  ago  the  bustard  had  vanished  from 
our  downs,  and  within  the  memory  of  man  the 


26  Our  Poor  Relations. 

last  pair  of  wheatears  were  shot  in  Sussex. 
The  act  which  has  of  late  come  to  be  stigma- 
tized as  "  bird-murder,"  still,  in  rural  districts, 
casts  a  halo  of  glory  round  the  perpetrator ;  and 
we  frequently  read  in  provincial  papers  how 
"  Mr.  James  Butcher,  gamekeeper  at  Longears, 
lately  shot  a  fine  specimen  of  the  golden  eagle  ; " 
or  how  "our  respected  fellow-townsman,  Mr. 
Noodle,  killed,  last  Wednesday,  the  only  hoopoe 
that  has  visited  this  part  of  the  country  for 
many  years."  Nightingales,  so  common  in  the 
south  of  England,  have  not  spread  so  far  west- 
ward as  Devonshire  ;  and  an  idiot  once  wrote 
to  the  papers  to  announce  that  he  had  just 
succeeded  in  killing  one  which  had  been  guilty 
of  straying  within  the  confines  of  that  county, 
"  as  it  was  singing  on  the  top  of  a  thorn." 
Sometimes,  in  distant  seas,  new  tracts  of  coast 
have  been  discovered  abounding  in  seals,  and 
straightway  crews  of  enterprising  mariners  have 
arrived  armed  with  spears  and  clubs,  who  have 
wallowed  in  slaughter,  never  ceasing  to  stab 
and  strike  till  all  that  hapless  and  harmless 
life  was  extinct,  no  tenants  again  forever  lend- 
ing cheer  to  those  desolate  shores,  the  gray, 
lonely  sea  no  more  rippled  by  their  sports. 


Our  Poor  Relations.  27 

Wherever  there  is  no  law  for  the  river  or  the 
lake,  the  inhabitants  of  the  flood  disappear  — 
even  the  countless  tribes  of  the  ocean  are  being 
rapidly  thinned  by  the  insatiate  rapacity  of  man. 
But  not  for  his  bodily  needs  alone  has  the 
human  animal  been  so  lavish  in  destroying 
others.  His  spiritual  interests  have  also  de- 
manded much  of  that  kind  of  prodigality.  A 
devil,  under  one  name  or  another,  lies  at  the  root 
of  many  religions  ;  and  many,  in  their  infancies, 
have  recognized  the  duty  of  propitiating  the  un- 
seen powers  by  sacrifice.  Deeply  convinced, 
and  with  good  reason,  of  the  tremendous  power 
of  evil  in  human  affairs  ;  feeling  in  his  own  lot 
how  irresistible  is  the  force  of  malignant  influ- 
ences, how  futile  his  efforts  to  evade  them, — 
man  has  soon  learned  to  associate  the  super- 
natural power  which  he  dreads,  with  delight  in 
inflicting  pain  ;  and,  accustomed  to  slay  crea- 
tures for  his  own  wants,  he  next  conceives  the 
idea  of  slaying  them  for  the  satisfaction  of  his 
sanguinary  gods.  In  most  lands  the  supplica- 
tions of  the  savage  to  his  deity  are  written  in 
blood  ;  and  his  petitions,  often  foolish  and  often 
wicked,  are  thought  to  be  more  palatable  if  they 
ascend  in  the  smoke  of  burnt-offerings.  As 


28  Our  Poor  Relations. 

civilization  advances,  sacrifice  grows  more  cere- 
monial —  butchery  becomes  a  priestly  function  ; 
and  the  ancient  world  was  filled  with  blood- 
stained altars,  and  the  mythology  of  its  peoples 
with  prescribed  modes  of  reverential  slaughter, 
and  the  assignment  to  particular  deities  of  par- 
ticular victims.  It  was  natural  that  the  idea  of 
propitiation  by  vicarious  suffering  should  extend 
till  it  included  man  himself;  and  had  the  oxen, 
and  lambs,  and  kids,  and  birds,  whose  fellows 
bled  so  constantly  as  votive  offerings,  been  capa- 
ble of  sharing  the  strictly  human  pleasure  of 
gratified  vindictiveness,  they  would  have  found 
ample  opportunity  for  exulting  in  the  spectacle 
of  men  sacrificed  by  their  fellows.  "  Moloch, 
horrid  king,"  has  been  worshipped,  though  not 
always  under  that  name,  in  many  lands,  and  in 
many  ages  ;  his  grinning  image  has  looked  down 
on  Druids  with  their  wicker  idols  filled  with 
victims,  and  on  Aztec  priests  laying  hearts  yet 
beating  on  his  altar-stone.  Even  in  our  day, 
his  votary  the  Thug  makes  assassination  the 
chief  article  of  religion,  and  the  king  of  Dahomey 
floats  his  consecrated  canoe  in  human  blood. 
There  was  a  profound  meaning,  and  one  applica- 
ble to  the  history  of  our  race,  in  Hogarth's  repre- 


Our  Poor  Relations,  29 

sentation  of  different  stages  in  atrocity,  where  the 
hero,  beginning  with  cruelty,  ends  with  murder. 
Nevertheless,  in  all  his  slayings  and  his  sac- 
rifices, man  has  had  standing  between  him  and 
reprobation  the  plea  of  the  hard  conditions  of 
life,  which  rendered  his  acts  natural  and  neces- 
sary, and  therefore  not  degrading.  Even  when 
the  chase,  as  in  the  great  huntings  of  the  Asiat- 
ic monarchs,  left  the  plain  laden  with  carcasses, 
this  was  still  only  the  excess  of  a  propensity 
easy  to  be  justified.  But  perhaps,  in  course  of 
time,  the  habit  of  looking  on  the  whole  animal 
world  as  absolutely  subject  to  the  convenience 
of  man,  and  of  regarding  the  infliction  of  death 
with  indifference,  developed  a  latent  germ  in 
our  mysterious  nature,  whereupon  a  new  human 
quality  —  namely,  CRUELTY  —  sprang  up  and 
greatly  flourished.  No  doubt  it  had,  in  the 
congenial  soil  of  individual  human  breasts,  in  all 
times  found  its  habitat :  natures  partaking  so 
much  more  of  the  demon  than  the  god  as  to 
find  enjoyment  in  the  contemplation  of  pain, 
must  always  have  been  but  too  plentiful.  But 
in  course  of  time  this  poisonous  offspring  of  a 
bad  heart  came,  in  gardeners'  language,  to  be 
"  bedded  out "  in  national  institutions,  such  as 


30  Our  Poor  Relations. 

the  Flavian  and  other  amphitheatres,  our  owrr 
bear-baitings,  bull-baitings,  badger-baitings,  rat- 
killings,  and  cock-fights,  the  arenas  of  Eastern 
princes,, and  the  bull-rings  of  Spain  ;  and  whole 
peoples  were  trained  in  the  main  doctrine  of 
devil-worship  —  namely,  that  it  is  delightful  to 
inflict  or  to  witness  agony.  All  the  aid  which 
grandeur  of  architecture,  pomp  of  ceremonial,  the 
sanction  of  authority,  and  the  keen  expectation 
and  high-strung  interest  which  are  engendered 
in  the  holiday  assemblies  of  multitudes,  could 
lend  to  develop  cruelty  and  quench  humanity, 
was  afforded  by  these  great  spectacles.  Rome 
transferred  to  the  huge  circus,  on  these  occa- 
sions, her  statecraft,  her  priesthood,  her  beauty, 
her  lofty  patrician  airs  and  graces,  her  jolly 
plebeian  merriment  ;  fresh  garlands,  new  togas, 
gay  girdles,  rich  robes,  and  brilliant  gems,  made 
the  wide  sweep  of  the  amphitheatre  a  circle  of 
splendor.  Into  the  sand-strewn  space  below 
crowded  the  bewildered  inhabitants  of  the  forest 
and  the  desert  ^—^  the  slow-stalking  elephant,  the 
giraffe  with  its  towering  form  and  gentle  eyes, 
the  sleek  slinking  tiger,  the  sturdy  undaunted 
boar,  the  plumed  ostriches  hurrying  hither  and 
thither  in  search  of  an  outlet.  Brilliant  thus 


Our  Poor  Relations.  31 

far  the  spectacle  —  but  interesting  to  "  those 
bold  Romans"  only  for  its  promise  of  slaughter  ; 
and  their  enjoyment  was  incomplete  till  the 
bright  fur  was  dabbled  in  blood,  the  huge  forms 
still  in  death,  the  feathers  strewn  on  the  sand  ; 
and  then,  from  full  and  grateful  hearts,  they  ap- 
plauded the  imperial  purveyor  of  the  sport,  the 
good  old  monarch  Tiberius,  who  went  home  to 
spend  the  evening  in  torturing  some  slaves,  or 
the  most  sweet  youth  Domitian,  who  had  been 
killing  flies  in  his  palace  all  the  morning.  And 
in  the  Plazas  de  Toros  of  Ronda,  Seville,  or 
Madrid,  the  modern  spectator  may  realize  no 
small  portion  of  the  magnificence  of  the  amphi- 
theatres of  the  old  world,  and  may  see,  joyous 
and  eager  as  ever,  the  spirit  that  delights  in 
blood.  This  consecration  of  cruelty  could  not 
but  react  on  the  people  ;  torture  was  a  refined, 
and  at  the  same  time  a  cheap,  pleasure  ;  pov- 
erty itself,  debarred  from  such  luxuries  as  ele- 
phants and  ostriches,  could  at  least  procure 
cats,  rats,  birds,  and  frogs  ;  and  wherever  there 
was  a  defenceless  animal  and  a  few  ingenuous 
youth,  there  was  a  small  Colosseum.  It  was 
natural  that  a  people  thus  trained  should  de- 
mand, for  the  full  satisfaction  of  their  desires, 
the  blood  of  gladiators  and  captives. 


32  Our  Poor  Relations. 

No  longer  sacrificing  to  the  ancient  gods,  we 
still  lay  living  offerings  on  the  shrine  of  the 
chief  divinity  in  modern  mythology  —  namely, 
Science.  The  most  virtuous  among  us  agree 
(not  without  a  certain  air  of  pious  satisfaction 
at  the  supposed  necessity)  that  it  is  lawful  to 
dissect  live  animals  for  the  benefit  of  humanity. 
Where  the  sanctioning  law  is  to  be  found  we 
know  not,  and  it  was  certainly  made  without 
reference  to  the  parties  principally  concerned, 
which  seems  hardly  consonant  with  the  spirit 
of  modern  legislation.  It  may,  however,  be 
granted,  that  when  some  great  discovery  is  the 
result,  the  wrong  may  be,  if  not  justified,  ex- 
cused—  that,  when  Bell  succeeds  in  demon- 
strating the  functions  of  the  brain,  we  may 
agree  not  to  inquire  too  closely  into  the  number 
of  living  creatures  whose  nerves  of  motion  and 
sensation  were  laid  bare  and  pricked  with  nee- 
dles during  the  investigation.  Neither  can  we 
altogether  condemn  that  discoverer  when  we 
find  him  preparing  to  procure  a  monkey  on 
which  to  practise  the  operation  that  goes  by 
his  name  (Bell's,  not  the  monkey's),  for  the  cure 
of  squinting  —  though,  of  course,  the  monkey 
would  not  care  if  the  whole  human  race  squint- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  33 

ed.  For  a  lover  to  adore  a  nymph  who  squints 
—  to  sit  in  her  presence  in  a  kind  of  cross-fire 
from  eyes  which  look  all  ways  at  once,  like  the 
muzzles  of  rifles  at  a  Volunteer  review  —  to  be- 
lieve that  she  is  contemplating  him,  when  she 
is  gazing  tenderly  at  his  rival,  and  to  suspect 
that  she  is  ogling  his  rival  when  he  is  himself 
the  sole  object  of  her  erratic  glances,  —  is  a  sit- 
uation so  full  of  anxiety  and  doubt  that  we  rec- 
ommend it  to  the  notice  of  our  minor  poets ; 
while  the  joy  of  the  swain  at  finding  that  an 
operation  has  brought  the  vision  of  the  beloved 
one  into  the  paths  of  rectitude,  and  that  he  can 
now  bask  confidently  in  the  focus  of  her  looks, 
may  well  compensate  for  some  slight  inconven- 
ience to  the  subject  of  the  original  experiment. 
On  such  grounds  we  may  condone  the  practices 
of  Bell  ;  but  after  excepting  a  few  great  names, 
we  fear  there  are  still,  throughout  the  surgical 
and  veterinary  professions,  numerous  diligent 
inquirers,  who,  without  the  intellect  necessary 
to  penetrate  the  secrets  of  science,  are  engaged 
in  the  pursuit  of  delusions,  or  of  crotchets,  or 
of  matters  unimportant  if  true,  and  on  such 
grounds  do  not  hesitate  to  submit  animals  to 
the  most  prolonged  and  horrible  tortures.  The 
3 


34  Our  Poor  Relations. 

professional  gentleman  who  is  known  to  be  en- 
gaged in  such  practices  may  very  fairly  be  sus- 
pected of  indulging  a  taste  under  the  sanction 
of  a  duty  ;  for  it  is  hardly  to  be  believed  that 
anybody  who  did  not  enjoy  vivisection  for  its 
own  sake  would  submit  his  nature  to  what 
would  be  such  violence,  unless  under  the  pres- 
sure of  a  very  exceptionally  powerful  motive. 
The  miscreants  of  the  veterinary  colleges  of 
Lyons  and  Alfort,  for  example,  who  habitually 
performed  many  most  terrible  operations,  some 
of  them  of  no  possible  application  as  remedies, 
on  the  same  living  horse,  and  who  warmly  re- 
sented interference,  must  have  found  a  horrid 
relish  in  their  vile  vocation.  In  a  letter  pub- 
lished in  a  journal  devoted  to  the  interests  of 
animals,  we  find  one  of  the  principal  surgeons 

of  the  Hotel  Dieu,  M.  le  Docteur  M (we 

are  sorry  we  cannot  give  his  honorable  name), 
reported  as  saying  that  studies  and  experiments 
are  always  made  on  living  animals  ;  and  that 
there  is  a  class  of  men  who  live  by  catching 
stray  dogs  and  selling  them  to  be  operated  on, 
five  or  six  operations  being  often  performed  on 
the  same  animal.  "  Sometimes,"  said  the  Doc- 
tor, "  I  have  taken  pity  upon  the  poor  brutes  ; 


Page  35- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  35 

they  showed  so  much  intelligence,  and  seemed 
to  think  I  was  operating  upon  them  to  do  them 
good.  In  such  cases  I  have  occasionally  kept 
them,  but  ustially  I  turn  tliem  into  the  street? 
Is  it  uncharitable  to  hope  that  the  next  dog 
operated  on  may  be  rabid,  and  may  bite  this 
scientific  inquirer  ?  There  is  a  well-known 
piteous  case,  too,  of  an  English  vivisector  who 
operated  on  his  own  dog  while  it  licked  the 
hand  that  continued  to  dissect  it. 

But  there  is  yet  another  class  of  these  vota- 
ries of  science,  called  Naturalists,  to  whom  no 
kind  of  creature  that  can  be  classified  comes 
amiss  as  a  victim,  from  a  butterfly  to  a  hippo- 
potamus. Armed  sometimes  with  a  rifle,  some- 
times less  expensively  with  a  pin,  they  go  forth 
into  strange  lands  to  collect  what  they  call  the 
"  fauna."  Millions  of  moths,  before  they  have 
fluttered  out  half  their  brief  existence  in  the 
sunshine,  are  secured  by  these  sportsmen,  and 
impaled  in  boxes.  Lizards  and  other  reptiles 
suspected  of  differing  from  the  rest  of  their 
race,  are  put  to  death  without  mercy.  The 
rarity  of  various  birds,  and  the  splendor  of  their 
plumage,  are  held  to  be  sufficient  grounds  for 
their  execution.  So  earnest  in  their  pursuit 


36  Our  Poor  Relations. 

are  these  gentlemen,  that  we  have  sometimes, 
when  reading  their  own  accounts  of  their  do- 
ings, suspected  that  they  would  have  scrupled 
little  to  add  a  stray  Native  now  and  then  to 
their  collection,  provided  they  did  not  thereby 
expose  themselves  to  the  penalties  for  murder. 
We  will  here  give  some  extracts  from  the  re- 
cent work  of  a  naturalist,  which  is  in  many 
respects  agreeable  and  entertaining,  premising 
that  the  "Mias"  who  figures  in  them  is  a  gigan- 
tic ape  (the  orang-outang,  we  believe),  a  native 
of  Borneo,  living  for  the  most  part  inoffensive- 
ly on  the  products  of  the  woods  ;  and  that  only 
a  single  case  is  quoted  in  the  book  of  any  of 
the  race  having  injured  mankind,  in  which  one 
that  was  intercepted  in  its  retreat  to  a  tree,  and 
stabbed  with  spears  and  hacked  with  axes,  re- 
sented these  playful  aggressions  so  far  as  to 
bite  one  of  its  assailants  in  the  arm.  This  is 
the  account  of  the  result  of  a  great  many  shots 
fired  by  the  naturalist  at  a  Mias  who  was 
making  off  through  the  branches  of  the  tall 
trees  :  "  On  examination  we  found  that  he 
had  been  dreadfully  wounded.  Both  legs  were 
broken,  one  hip-joint  and  the  root  of  the  spine 
completely  shattered,  and  two  bullets  were 


Our  Poor  Relations.  37 

found  flattened  in  his  neck  and  jaws!     Yet  he 
was  still  alive  when  he  fell." 

Another  of  these  subjects  of  scientific  inves- 
tigation was  thus  treated  :  — 

"  Two  shots  caused  this  animal  to  lose 'his  hold,  but 
he  hung  for  a  considerable  time  by  one  hand,  and  then 
fell  flat  on  his  face,  and  was  half  buried  in  the  swamp. 
For  several  minutes  he  lay  groaning  and  panting,  and 
we  stood  close  round,  expecting  every  breath  to  be  his 
last.  Suddenly,  however,  by  a  violent  effort,  he  raised 
himself  up,  causing  us  all  to  step  back  a  yard  or  two, 
when,  standing  nearly  erect,  he  caught  hold  of  a  small 
tree,  and  began  to  ascend  it.  Another  shot  through  the 
back  caused  him  to  fall  down  dead.  A  flattened  bullet 
was  found  in  his  tongue,  having  entered  the  lower  part 
of  the  abdomen,  and  completely  traversed  the  body,  frac- 
turing the  first  cervical  vertebra.  Yet  it  was  after  this 
fearful  wound  that  he  had  risen  and  begun  climbing  with 
considerable  facility." 

This  was  the  fate  of  another  of  these  unfor- 
tunates :  — 

"  We  found  a  Mias  feeding  in  a  very  lofty  durion  tree, 
and  succeeded  in  killing  it  after  eight  shots.  Unfor- 
tunately it  remained  in  the  tree,  hanging  by  its  hands; 
and  we  were  obliged  to  leave  it  and  return  home,  as  it 
was  several  miles  off.  As  I  felt  pretty  sure  it  would  fall 
during  the  night,  I  returned  to  the  place  early  the  next 
morning,  and  found  it  on  the  ground  beneath  the  tree. 
To  my  •astonishment  and  pleasure,  it  appeared  to  be  a 
different  kind  from  any  I  had  yet  seen." 

Perhaps  the  reader,  whose  sensibilities  are  as 
yet  unaffected  by  companionship  with  natural- 


38  Our  Poor  Relations. 

ists,  may  think  that  these  are  very  shocking 
penalties  for  the  crime  of  being  a  Mias,  and  of 
possessing  an  anatomical  structure  much  coveted 
by  museums  ;  and  may  feel  disposed  (parodying 
Madame  Roland)  to  exclaim,  "  O  Science,  what 
deeds  are  done  in  thy  name  !  " 

In  those  days  (says  an  Oriental  fabulist  in  the 
least  known  of  his  apologues  which  we  have 
taken  the  trouble  to  translate  from  the  original 
Arabic),  when  certain  sages  were  acquainted 
with  the  language  of  animals  (an  accomplish- 
ment which  they  inherited  from  Solomon,  who 
is  well  known  to  have  added  this  to  his  other 
stores  of  wisdom),  it  naturally  came  to  pass 
that,  not  only  did  men  know  something  of  the 
thoughts  of  birds  and  beasts,  but  to  birds  and 
beasts  were  imparted  some  of  the  ideas  of  men, 
and,  among  others,  that  of  a  devil  or  malignant 
power  who  is  the  source  of  evil.  Much  im- 
pressed with  the  reality  of  the  ills  of  life,  and 
the  expediency  of  lessening  them,  the  fowls  and 
brutes  resolved  to  seek  some  means  of  propi- 
tiating the  being  who  exercised  over  them  so 
baleful  an  influence.  Accordingly  they  held  a 
convocation  to  debate  the  matter,  and  finding 


Our  Poor  Relations.  39 

it  necessary,  as  a  first  step,  to  gain  a  more 
definite  idea  of  the  nature  and  attributes  of/ this 
malevolent  Power,  different  classes  of  animals 
were  called  on  to  describe  the  ills  they  chiefly 
suffered  from,  that  their  misfortunes  might  thus 
be  traced  to  a  common  source.  The  Lion,  as 
the  representative  of  beasts  of  prey,  declared 
that  he  would  have  nothing  to  complain  of,  game 
being  plentiful,  were  it  not  for  the  accursed 
hunters  with  their  devices,  which  left  him  no 
peace.  The  Antelope  said  that  the  class  of 
wild  creatures  to  which  he  belonged  would  be 
content  to  match  their  own  vigilance  and  swift- 
ness against  the  craft  and  strength  of  their  four- 
footed  persecutors,  but  that  they  could  not  con- 
tend with  the  terrible  ingenuity  of  man,  who,  in 
his  pursuit  of  them,  had  even  called  other  ani- 
mals to  his  aid  ;  and  that,  whereas  a  beast  of 
prey  molested  them  only  for  the  satisfaction  of 
his  individual  needs,  man  was  insatiate  in  slaugh- 
ter. The  birds  were  of  one  consent  that  they 
feared  little  the  hostility  of  animals,  but  that 
snares  and  traps  rendered  their  lives  a  burden 
by  causing  them  to  distrust  every  mouthful  they 
ate.  The  Sheep,  as  the  mouthpiece  of  a  large 


4O  Our  Poor  Relations. 

class  of  domestic  animals,  declared  that  he  was 
well  cared  for,  fed,  and  protected  from  harm,  but 
that  he  paid  a  heavy  price  for  these  favors  by  liv- 
ing in  constant  expectation  of  the  inevitable  and 
extremely  premature  moment  when  he  would  be- 
come mutton.  The  Horse  averred  that  he  also 
was  well  cared  for,  and  that,  moreover,  his  life, 
unlike  the  sheep's,  was  insured  so  long  as  he  had 
health  and  strength,  but  (motioning  with  his 
muzzle  towards  the  saddle-marks  on  his  back 
and  the  spur-galls  on  his  flanks)  that  his  life  was 
deprived  of  savor  by  being  one  of  perpetual 
slavery.  The  Dog  said  that  his  lot  might  perhaps 
seem  the  happiest  of  all,  in  being  the  compan- 
ion of  his  master,  but  that  in  reality  he  had 
more  to  lament  than  any  of  them,  since  protec- 
tion was  only  granted  to  him  on  condition  that 
he  should  aid  in  the  destruction  of  his  fellow- 
brutes.  A  great  mass  of  information  having 
been  accumulated  in  this  way,  the  assembly 
seemed  still  as  far  as  ever  from  discovering  the 
object  of  its  inquiry,  when  an  ancient  Raven,  of 
vast  repute  for  wisdom,  hopping  to  a  loftier 
branch,  desired  to  speak.  "  My  friends,"  he 
croaked,  "  what  we  are  seeking  lies  under  our 
very  noses.  I  perceive  what  this  power  of  evil 


Ozir  Poor  Relations.  41 

is,  and  how  futile  will  be  all  attempts  to  propi- 
tiate it,  for  it  is  clear  that  Man,  insatiate  Man, 
is  our  Devil ! " 


Yet,  in  truth,  is  Nature  often  no  less  harsh 
than  man  in  dealing  with  her  inarticulate  off- 
spring. To  them  (as  indeed  to  us)  she  shows 
fitful  favor,  capricious  severity.  In  one  zone 
animal  life  seems  all  happiness,  in  another  all 
misery.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  a  care-laden,  tax- 
hampered  citizen  merely  to  think  how,  under 
certain  conditions  of  adaptation  to  climate,  whole 
tribes  of  creatures,  countless  in  number,  revel 


42  Our  Poor  Relations. 

in  the  opulence  and  prodigality  of  food,  of  air, 
of  sunshine,  and  of  sport  ;  —  the  task  of  support- 
ing life  is  so  easy  as  to  leave  them  infinite  leisure 
for  enjoying  it  ;  —  they  are  as  Sandwich  Island- 
ers, into  whose  simple,  untaught  methods  of 
making  existence  pleasure,  no  missionary  can 
ever  introduce  the  jarring  element  of  a  half- 
awakened  conscience.  As  Shelley  heard  in  the 
notes  of  the  skylark  "clear,  keen  joyance,"  "love 
of  its  own  kind,"  and  "  ignorance  of  pain,"  and 
exhausted  himself  in  sweet  similitudes  for  the 
small  musician  that  "  panted  forth  a  flood  of 
rapture  so  divine,"  —  so,  had  we  his  gift,  we 
might  discern  elements  as  rare  in  the  lives  of 
various  races,  but  which,  owing  to  the  accident 
of  wanting  a  grammatical  language,  they  are  un- 
able to  reveal  to  us.  What  a  descriptive  poem 
must  the  Eagle  have  in  him,  who,  sailing  in  ether, 
miles  beyond  our  ken,  sees  earth  beneath  him 
as  a  map,  and  through  gaps  in  the  clouds  catches 
blue  glimpses  of  the  ocean  and  yellow  gleams  of 
the  desert !  Often,  while  resting  on  his  great 
pennons  in  the  serene  blue,  has  he  seen  a  thun- 
der-storm unroll  its  pageant  beneath  him,  and 
watched  the  jagged  lightning  as  it  darted  earth- 
ward. (Tom  Campbell  was  once  taken  up  by 


Our  Poor  Relations.  43 

an  eagle  near  Oran,  and,  coming  safely  down, 
described  what  he  had  seen  in  immortal  verse.) 
Those  hermit  birds  which  live  by  lonely  streams 
in  wild  valleys,  like  the  Ousel  and  the  King- 
fisher, must  be  full  of  delicate  fancies  —  fancies 
very  different  from  those,  which  must  be  very 
delicate  also,  that  visit  the  nomads  of  the  air, 
such  as  the  Swallow,  the  Cuckoo,  and  the  Quail, 
with  their  large  experience  of  countries,  and 
climes,  and  seas.  How  delicious,  how  ever  fresh, 
how  close  to  nature,  the  life  of  a  Sea-fowl  whose 
home  is  in  some  cliff  fronting  the  dawn,  and 
who,  dwelling  always  there,  yet  sees  infinite 
variety  in  the  ever-changing  sky  and  sea  — 
flapping  leisurely  over  the  gentle  ripples  in  the 
morning  breeze  —  alighting  in  the  depths  which 
mirror  the  evening  sky  so  placidly  as  to  break 
into  circles  round  the  dip  of  his  wing  —  pierc- 
ing, like  a  ray,  the  silver  haze  of  the  rain-cloud 

—  lost  in  the  dusky  bosom  of  the  squall  —  blown 
about  like  a  leaf  on  the  storm  which  strews  the 
shore  with  wrecks  —  and,  next  day,  rising  and 
falling  in  the  sunshine  on  the  curves  of  the  swell ! 
Turning  from  air  to  earth,  the  very  spirit  of  Tell 

—  the  spirit  of  independence  bred  of  the  pure 
sharp  air  of  mountain  solitudes  and  the  stern 


44  Our  Poor  Relations. 

aspect  of  the  snow-clad  pinnacles  —  must  live 
in  the  Chamois,  who  seeks  his  food  and  pastime 
on  the  verge  of  immeasurable  precipices.  Grand 
also,  but  infinitely  different,  the  solitary  empire 
of  some  shaggy  lord  of  the  wilderness  on  whose 
ease  none  may  intrude,  and  who  stalks  through 
life  surrounded  by  images  of  flight  and  terror  — 
glowing  always  with  the  gloomy  rage  of  the 
despot  —  a  despot  careless  of  hereditary  right, 
elected  by  nobody's  suffrage,  relying  on  no 
strength  but  his  own,  and  absolutely  indifferent 
to  public  opinion.  Below  these  lofty  regions  of 
animal  grandeur,  but  quite  within  the  circle  of 
comfort  and  happiness,  dwell  an  infinite  number 
of  creatures,  some  finding  their  feliciiy  in  flocks 
or  herds,  some  in  retiring  into  strict  domestic 
seclusion  with  the  mate  of  their  choice,  some  in 
exercising  the  constructive  faculties  with  which 
they  are  so  mysteriously  and  unerringly  endowed. 
The  coneys  are  but  a  feeble  folk,  yet  they  may 
have  their  own  ideas  of  household  suffrage  in 
those  close  burrows  of  theirs,  and  could  doubt- 
less chronicle  much  that  would  be  valuable 
to  parents  while  bringing  up  about  fifteen  fam- 
ilies a  year.  Rats  and  mice,  and  such  small 
deer,  lead  lives  of  great  variety,  observation,  and 


Our  Poor  Relations.  45 

adventure,  though  precarious  and  mostly  tragi- 
cal in  their  ending,  the  poison  and  the  steel 
being  as  fatal  to  them  as  to  the  enemies  of  the 
Borgias,  or  claimants  to  disputed  successions  in 
the  middle  ages.  And  again,  beneath  these, 
too  insignificant  to  excite  the  hostility  or  cupid- 
ity of  man,  are  infinite  populations,  creeping 
and  winged  things,  whose  spacious  home  is  the 
broad  sunshine  ;  so  that,  viewed  from  a  favor- 
able standpoint,  every  nook  and  corner  of  the 
world,  its  cellars,  garrets,  lumber-rooms,  and 
all,  seem  to  overflow  with  busy  delight  or  quiet 
happiness. 

But  who  would  recognize  in  this  kind  and 
liberal  mother,  so  lavish  of  pleasures  to  her  off- 
spring, the  stern  power  that  makes  the  lives  of 
whole  races  sheer  misery  ?  Can  any  one  fancy 
what  it  must  be  to  have  habitual  dread  forming 
an  element  of  life,  and  transmitted  through 
countless  generations  till  it  finds  expression  in 
habits  of  vigilance,  of  stealth,  and  of  evasion, 
that  we  take  for  peculiar  instincts  ?  This  pow- 
er of  communicating  the  results  of  experience, 
and  of  circulating  throughout  a  whole  species 
the  fear  of  a  known  evil,  is  one  of  the  most  in- 
explicable faculties  of  unreasoning  and  inartic- 


46  Our  Poor  Relations. 

ulate  creatures.  A  naturalist,  well  qualified  to 
form  an  opinion,  believes,  we  are  told,  that  the 
life  of  all  beasts  in  their  wild  state  is  an  exceed- 
ingly anxious  one ;  that  "  every  antelope  in 
South  Africa  has  literally  to  run  for  its  life  once 
in  every  one  or  two  days  upon  an  average,  and 
that  he  starts  or  gallops  under  the  influence  of 
a  false  alarm  many  times  in  a  day."  Our  own 
fields  and  woods  are  full  of  proscribed  creatures 
which  must  feel  as  if  they  had  no  business  in 
creation,  and  only  draw  their  breath  by  stealth, 
vanishing  in  earth,  or  air,  or  water,  at  the  shad- 
ow of  an  imagined  enemy.  In  those  lands  of 
the  sun  where  vegetation  is  most  luxuriant,  and 
food  consequently  most  assured,  there  is  yet  a 
kind  of  privation  as  terrible  as  hunger.  "At 
Koobe,"  says  Livingstone,  describing  his  expe- 
riences in  Africa,  "  there  was  such  a  mass  of 
mud  in  the  pond,  worked  up  by  the  wallowing 
rhinoceros  to  the  consistency  of  mortar,  that 
only  by  great  labor  could  we  get  a  space  cleared 
at  one  side  for  the  water  to  ooze  through  and 
collect  in  for  the  oxen.  Should  the  rhinoceros 
come  back,  a  single  roll  in  the  great  mass  we 
had  thrown  on  one  side  would  have  rendered 
all  our  labor  vain.  It  was  therefore  necessary 


Our  Poor  Relations.  47 

for  us  to  guard  the  spot  by  night.  On  these 
great  flats,  all  around,  we  saw  in  the  white  sul- 
try glare  herds  of  zebras,  gnus,  and  occasionally 
buffaloes,  standing  for  days,  looking  wistfully 
towards  the  wells  for  a  share  of  the  nasty  wa- 
ter." And  in  other  parts  of  the  African  conti- 
nent, when  the  fierceness  of  the  summer  has 
dried  up  the  rivers,  the  amphibia,  great  and 
small,  collect  in  uncongenial  crowds  in  the  pools 
left  along  the  deeper  parts  of  the  channel ;  and 
the  land  animals,  the  deer,  the  apes,  the  birds, 
stoop  hastily  and  furtively  to  snatch  insufficient 
draughts  from  the  depths  where  lurk  so  many 
ravenous  foes.  Then,  in  colder  lands,  what 
wretchedness  does  winter  bring  —  when  the 
snow  puts  an  end  to  the  livelihood  of  all  the 
tribes  which  seek  sustenance  on  the  earth,  and 
the  frost  mocks  the  misery  of  those  whose  food 
is  in  the  marsh  or  the  pool !  The  frozen-out 
woodcock  taps  in  vain  for  a  soft  spot  in  which 
to  insert  his  slender  bill  —  his  larder  is  locked 
up  and  the  key  gone.  Now  and  then  comes  a 
winter  so  sharp  that  the  naturalist  misses,  next 
summer,  whole  species  from  their  accustomed 
haunts.  In  one  long  frost  all  the  snipe  perished 
in  parts  of  Scotland,  and  have  never  been  plen- 


48  Our  Poor  Relations. 

tiful  since.  A  rural  poet,  Hurdis,  who  caught 
no  inconsiderable  portion  of  Cowper's  inspira- 
tion, has  the  following  passage  on  the  condition 
of  birds  m  winter,  which  took  such  effect  on 
our  boyhood  as  to  save  many  a  blackbird  and 
starling  from  our  "  resounding  tube,"  and  which, 
on  reading  it  again  after  the  not  brief  interval 
now  separating  us  from  that  golden  time,  still 
seems  to  us  much  more  genuine  poetry  than 
many  elegant  extracts  of  far  higher  preten- 
sion :  — 

"  Subdued  by  hunger,  the  poor  feathery  tribes, 
Small  dread  of  man  retain,  though  wounded  oft, 
Oft  slain,  or  scared  by  his  resounding  tube. 
The  fieldfare  gray,  and  he  of  ruddier  wing, 
Hop  o'er  the  field  unheeding,  easy  prey 
To  him  whose  heart  has  adamant  enough 
To  level  thunder  at  their  humbled  race. 
The  sable  bird  melodious  from  the  bough 
No  longer  springs,  alert  and  clamorous, 
Short  flight  and  sudden  with  transparent  wing 
Along  the  dike  performing,  fit  by  fit. 
Shuddering  he  sits  in  horrent  coat  outswoln. 
Despair  has  made  him  silent,  and  he  falls 
From  his  loved  hawthorn  of  its  berry  spoiled, 
A  wasted  skeleton,  shot  through  and  through 
By  the  near-aiming  sportsman.     Lovely  bird, 
So  end  thy  sorrows,  and  so  ends  thy  song; 
Never  again  in  the  still  summer's  eve, 
Or  early  dawn  of  purple-vested  morn, 
Shalt  thou  be  heard,  or  solitary  song 
Whistle  contented  from  the  watery  bough, 


Our  Poor  Relations.  49 

What  time  the  sun  flings  o'er  the  dewy  earth 

An  unexpected  beam,  fringing  with  flame 

The  cloud  immense,  whose  shower-shedding  folds 

Have  all  day  dwelt  upon  a  deluged  world : 

No,  thy  sweet  pipe  is  mute,  it  sings  no  more." 

The  picture  which  follows,  and  which  less 
obviously  aims  at  exciting  sympathy,  is  none 
the  less  effective  for  that :  — 

"  High  on  the  topmost  branches  of  the  elm, 
In  sable  conversation  sits  the  flock 
Of  social  starlings,  the  withdrawing  beam 
Enjoying,  sttpperless,  of  hasty  day." 

How  mournful  for  these  poor  starvelings  the 
fact,  apparently  so  insignificant,  that  the  tem- 
perature has  fallen  below  freezing-point !  What 
misery  is  approaching  them  in  the  leaden  gloom 
of  the  north-east !  And  in  those  circles  of  the 
earth  where  the  reign  of  winter  is  prolonged, 
hunger  is  the  inseparable  associate  of  life,  lying 
down  with  it  in  its  shivering  sleep,  rising  with 
it  in  its  gloomy  waking,  and  tracking  its  foot- 
steps always  along  the  ice-bound  circuit  of  its 
weary  quest. 

But  if  the  vicissitudes  of  climate  are  fraught 
with  suffering,  so  are  the  vicissitudes  of  age. 
The  infancy  of  many  animals  is  as  helpless  as 
4 


50  Our  Poor  Relations. 

babyhood.  Few  hired  nurses,  it  is  true,  are  so 
patient,  so  provident,  so  watchful,  so  untiring  in 
care,  as  the  dams,  feathered  or  furred,  who,  in 
nest  or  lair,  watch  over  their  young.  But  then 
the  lives  of  these  guardians  are  terribly  preca- 
rious, and  innumerable  are  the  orphans  of  the 
animal  world.  The  boy  with  his  snare  or  his 
stone — the  gamekeeper  with  gin,  or  net,  or 
gun  —  the  watchful  enemies  who  swoop  from 
the  air  or  spring  from  the  ambush  —  are  very 
apt  to  make  the  nurslings  motherless.  In  how 
many  an  eyrie  have  sat  gaping  eaglets  expec- 
tant of  the  broad  food-bringing  wings  that  will 
never  more  overshadow  them  —  the  said  wings 
being  then  indeed  outstretched  on  a  barn-door, 
nailed  there  by  that  intelligent  high-priest  of 
nature,  the  keeper !  In  how  many  burrows 
starve,  before  ever  seeing  the  light,  litters  of 
young  whose  providers  lie  dead  in  the  wood,  or 
hang  from  a  nail  in  the  larder  !  In  how  many 
nests  of  sticks,  swaying  on  the  pine-tops, 
scream  the  unfeathered  rooks,  while  the  old 
bird  is  suspended  as  a  scare-crow  in  the  distant 
corn-field!  Every  wet  spring  drowns  in  the 
holes  they  have  never  learnt  to  quit  a  multitude 
of  small  helpless  creatures  — •  every  storm  of 


Our  Poor  Relations.  51 

early  summer  casts  innumerable  half-fledged 
birds  prematurely  on  the  hard  world  to  cower, 
and  scramble,  and  palpitate,  and  hunger,  till  in- 
evitable doom  overtakes  them  after  a  more  or 
less  short  interval.  This  perilous  season  of  in- 
fancy past,  however,  the  youth  of  animals  is, 
compared  with  that  of  man,  secure  and  brief, 
and  their  maturity  is  generally  free  from  mor- 
bid or  disabling  accidents.  But  then  comes  the 
time  of  old  age  and  decay  —  old  age  such  as 
man's  would  be  if  wanting  all  which  Macbeth 
truly  says  should  accompany  it,  in  order  to 
render  its  many  infirmities  tolerable  —  "  honor, 
love,  obedience,  troops  of  friends."  As  the  ac- 
tivity necessary  to  procure  food  diminishes,  and 
the  joints  stiffen,  and  the  flesh  recedes,  leaving 
to  the  bones  the  task  of  sustaining  the  wrin- 
kling skin,  the  sunshine  grows  less  warm,  the 
wind  more  bitter  ;  and  if  the  worn-out  creature 
is  neither  made  prey  of  by  its  enemies,  nor  put 
to  death  (as  is  the  instinct  of  many  races)  by 
its  friends,  it  withdraws  .to  some  secret  spot  to 
die  in  solitude.  In  this  unprofitable  stage  of 
existence,  the  protection  of  man  is  accorded  to 
domesticated  animals  on  principles  strictly  com- 
mercial. Those  which  are  expected  to  pay  the 


52  Our  Poor  Relations. 

expenses  of  their  keep  are  pretty  certain  to 
find  an  execution  put  in  by  their  inexorable 
creditors  as  soon  as  they  become  bankrupt  of 
their  services,  and  those  only  are  suffered  to 
live  whose  existence  is  matter  of  luxury.  The 
old  bullfinch  is  allowed  to  drop  off  his  perch  in 
the  course  of  nature,  and  to  pipe  his  own  re- 
quiem —  the  old  parrot  dozes  quietly  away  after 
forgetting  half  his  phrases,  and  mixing  up  the 
rest  in  a  confusion  which  may,  perhaps,  be  his 
way  of  "  babbling  of  green  fields  "  —  the  old 
lapdog  is  recovered  by  medical  aid  out  of  many 
apoplexies  before  submitting  to  the  final  stroke 
—  the  old  spaniel  lives  on  to  meditate  on  the 
happy  hunting-grounds  of  the  past,  and  per- 
haps to  dream  of  those  of  the  future  ;  but  for 
the  old  horse  (unless  his  master  be  rich  as  well 
as  kind)  there  is  no  interval  of  rest  in  old  age, 
wherein  to  prepare  for  those  other  pastures 
whither  he  may  be  hastening,  or  to  reflect  on 
the  busy  portion  of  his  well-spent  or  ill-spent 
life.  Necessity  generally  compels  the  owner  to 
make  an  end  of  a  life  that  will  not  repay  its 
maintenance.  The  veteran,  "  lagging  superflu- 
ous on  the  stage,"  asks  for  bran  and  gets  a 
bullet ;  it  is  only  his  corn  that  he  wants 


Our  Poor  Relations.  53 

bruised    when   the  knacker    arrives   with   the 
pole-axe. 

Perhaps  no  case  of  royalty  in  reduced  circum- 
stances is  so  sad  as  that  of  the  lion  in  his  latter 
days.  Frequent  as  are,  in  our  times,  the  vicis- 
situdes of  monarchs,  neither  the  deposed  Queen 
of  Spain  at  Bayonne,  nor  the  exploded  Bomba 
in  Rome,  nor,  to  look  farther  back,  Louis  Phil- 
ippe appearing  suddenly  in  this  country  as  Mr. 
Smith,  with  a  carpet-bag  and  cotton  umbrella, 
is  so  melancholy  a  figure  of  fallen  greatness  as 
the  King  of  the  Solitudes  in  his  old  age.  The 
first  stage  of  his  decline  is  marked  by  the  in- 
ability any  longer  to  spring  on  the  nimble  ante- 
lope, or  to  cope  with  the  sturdy  buffalo  ;  and, 
against  his  better  nature,  the  leonine  Lear,  still 
grand  and  imposing  of  aspect,  but  bereft  of  his 
power,  is  driven  to  watch  for  stray  children 
going  to  the  well,  or  old  women  picking  sticks 
in  the  forest.  It  might  be  imagined  that  the 
sable  philosophers  of  the  bereaved  tribe  would 
regard  this  abduction  of  aged  females  as  praise- 
worthy, or  would  at  least  consider  the  eating  of 
them  as  a  sufficient  punishment  for  the  offence. 
Not  so,  however  ;  a  lion  once  known  as  a  man, 
woman,  or  child  eater,  is  by  no  means  encour- 


54  Our  Poor  Relations. 

aged,  even  in  Africa,  in  the  indulgence  of  his 
tastes  ;  and  what  with  constant  interruptions, 
and  the  necessity  for  increased  vigilance  against 
his  foes,  he  seldom  enjoys  a  meal  in  peace.  As 
his  teeth  fail  and  his  joints  stiffen,  he  is  no 
longer  able  to  capture  the  feeblest  crone  or  to 
masticate  the  tenderest  virgin  ;  and  in  the  "  last 
stage  of  all  that  ends  this  strange  eventful  his- 
tory," he  (as  we  learn  from  competent  authority) 
catches  mice  for  a  subsistence,  gulping  them 
like  pills,  and  ekes  out  the  insufficient  diet  with 
grass.  Imagine  this  incarnation  of  absolute 
power,  this  rioter  in  the  blood  of  swift  and  pow- 
erful beasts,  this  emitter  of  the  roar  that  causes 
all  the  hearts  in  the  wilderness  to  quake,  driven, 
in  what  should  be  a  majestic  old  age,  to  pick 
his  own  salads  and  to  turn  mouser  !  The  num- 
ber of  times  that,  with  his  large  frame  and  cor- 
responding appetite,  he  must  perform  for  each 
scanty  meal  the  degrading  act  of  watching  for 
and  pouncing  on  a  mouse,  must  ultimately  de- 
prave his  whole  character  ;  daily  he  must  sink 
lower  in  his  own  esteem  ;  reformation  and  sui- 
cide are  equally  denied  him  ;  till,  happily,  the 
savage  who  comes  upon  his  track,  knowing  by 
signs  that  he  has  been  forced  to  graze,  knows 


Page  54. 


Our  Poor  Relations.  55 

also  that  his  feebleness  is  great ;  and  finding 
him  not  far  off,  stretched  out  beneath  a  bush, 
in  the  sleep  of  exhaustion  or  the  torpor  of  self- 
contempt,  considerately  hastens  with  his  assagai 
to  draw  a  veil  over  the  painful  scene. 

Were  we  to  stop  here,  our  disquisition  would 
be  little  other  than  a  Jeremiad  —  an  empty 
lament  for  misfortunes  without  prospect  of  rem- 
edy —  a  crying  over  spilt  milk,  which  would  be 
equally  foreign  to  our  natural  character  and  our 
acquired  philosophy.  But  evil  as  has  been  the 
hap  of  the  animal  world,  there  are  visible  signs 
of  hope  for  it.  Its  relations  with  us  are  mani- 
festly and  rapidly  improving,  and  this  is  owing 
to  a  manifest  and  rapid  improvement  in  our- 
selves. Whether,  amid  all  our  boasts  of  the 
progress  of  the  species,  man  has  really  succeeded 
in  redressing  the  balance  of  good  and  evil  in 
his  nature,  may  be  matter  of  unpleasant  doubt. 
Sometimes,  when  a  very  reprehensible  or  lament- 
able failing  of  some  vanished  generation  is  set 
very  pressingly  before  us  —  some  horrid  perse- 
cution, political  or  religious  —  some  triumph  of 
unreason  —  some  huge  injustice  practised  by  a 
despot  on  a  people,  or  by  a  people  on  them- 
selves,—  we,  being  at  the  time,  perhaps,  in  es- 


56  Our  Poor  Relations. 

pecial  good  humor  with  the  world  around  us,  in 
which  those  particular  evils  are  not  possible,  take 
heart,  and  would  fain  believe  that  humanity  is 
getting  on.  But  presently,  when  we  notice  how 
our  contemporaries  form  what  they  imagine  to 
be  their  convictions,  what  sort  of  idols  they 
worship,  what  kind  of  progress  it  is  which  is 
least  disputable,  and  of  which  they  are  most 
proud,  we  lose  courage  again,  and  feel  as  if  man 
were  doomed  forever  to  revolve  in  the  vicious 
circle  of  some  maelstrom,  some  system  inside 
of  which  all  is  delusion,  while  outside  of  it  all  is 
doubt.  Surveying  mankind  with  extensive  view 
from  the  prehistoric  ages  to  Parliamentary  com- 
mittees on  education,  we  fancy  that  we  see 
much  of  our  gain  balanced  by  corresponding 
loss,  and  that  we  have  made  room  for  many  of 
our  most  valued  characteristics  only  by  discard- 
ing qualities  which  have  rendered  whole  races 
forever  famous.  As  we  grow  more  practical, 
we  decry  magnanimity  —  ceasing  to  be  su- 
perstitious, we  forget  to  be  earnest  —  vigor, 
born  of  enterprise,  is  smothered  in  luxury  — 
and  the  cuckoo  science  ousts  the  sparrow  faith. 
But  all  the  time,  various  as  are  the  aspects  of 
various  ages,  the  elements  of  humanity  remain 


Our  Poor  Relations.  57 

unaltered,  however  disguised  by  their  changing 
vesture  ;  even  as  while  the  landscape  shifts,  in 
one  period  a  wood,  or  swamp,  or  heath,  in  the 
next  a  farm  or  a  city,  the  central  fires  are  still 
glowing  beneath,  and  still  betray  their  presence 
at  times  in  an  earthquake  or  a  volcano.  Scrape 
a  man  of  science,  or  a  man  of  progress,  or  a  man 
of  fashion,  a  great  statesman  or  a  great  general, 
and  you  still  get  a  savage.  But  nevertheless,  in 
striking  the  balance  between  old  and  new,  there 
is  an  item  that  must  stand  to  our  credit  abso- 
lutely, without  deduction.  Our  relations  with 
the  races  which  share  the  earth  with  us  are  so 
changed,  and  the  change  is  still  so  progressive, 
that  a  new  element  would  almost  appear  to 
have  been  developed  in  our  nature.  All  the 
authors,  not  only  of  antiquity,  but  of  modern 
times,  down  to  a  few  generations  ago,  may  be 
searched  without  the  discovery  of  a  dozen  pas- 
sages indicative  of  that  fellowship  with  our  co- 
tenants  of  the  globe  which  is  now  so  common 
a  feeling.  That  the  good  man  is  merciful  to 
his  beast  —  that  the  ewe  lamb  of  the  parable 
drank  of  its  owner's  cup  and  lay  in  his  bosom 
—  that  Chaucer's  prioress  was  so  charitable  as 
to  weep  for  a  trapped  mouse  —  that  the  poor 


58  Our  Poor  Relations. 

beetle  which  we  tread  upon  feels  a  pang  as 
great  as  when  a  giant  dies  —  that  Dapple  was 
the  cherished  friend  of  Sancho,  —  are  chief 
among  the  few  cases  which  occur  to  us,  where 
consideration  for  animals  is  implied  in  the  best 
known  books  of  the  past.  Princes  and  heroes 
have  had  their  favorites,  four-legged  or  feath- 
ered, hawk  or  horse  or  hound  —  and  the  cour- 
sers of  Achilles,  the  dog  of  Ulysses,  and  the 
Cid's  steed  Bavieca,  have  their  place  in  romance 
and  in  history  ;  but  their  favor  was  born  rather 
of  pride  than  of  affection,  and  these  are  but 
slight  instances  to  set  against  so  many  ages  of 
mere  chattelage.  But  what  a  wealth  of  pleasant 
companionship  do  we  now  enjoy  in  the  society 
of  those  four-legged  familiars  without  whom  no 
household  seems  complete  !  and  how  largely  do 
their  representatives  figure  in  the  literature 
and  art  of  the  present  century  !  the  affectionate 
portraiture  by  pen  and  brush  being  both  the 
natural  result  of  that  kindlier  feeling,  and  the 
means  of  rendering  it  deeper  and  wider.  Look- 
ing backward  to  the  beginning  of  the  vista  of 
life  through  which  we  have  journeyed,  the  best- 
loved  books  of  our  childhood  were  those  in 
which  regard  for  animals  was  directly  or  in- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  59 

directly  inculcated  ;  the  indirect  lesson  being, 
however,  much  the  most  impressive.  Thus  when 
^Esop,  desiring  to  satirize  or  instruct  mankind 
through  the  medium  of  animals,  represents  his 
lions,  dogs,  foxes,  monkeys,  and  cranes,  as  not 
merely  conversing,  but  delivering  didactic  dis- 
courses, and  holding  political  debates,  it  is  im- 
possible for  the  reader  who  possesses  the  ardent 
faith  and  the  plastic  imagination  which  are  the 
choicest  endowments  of  childhood,  not  to  invest 
real  animals  with  some  of  the  faculties  imputed 
to  the  creations  of  the  fabulist.  Fairy  tales, 
too,  resort  largely  to  the  animal  world  for  ma- 
chinery ;  and  the  grimalkin  on  the  hearth-rug 
rises  immensely  in  the  estimation  of  the  juve- 
nile student  of  "  Puss  in  Boots,"  as  a  possible 
person ator  of  the  agent  of  the  Marquis  of  Cara- 
bas,  and  an  artful  plotter,  greatly  superior  to 
mere  men  in  the  devising  of  stratagems.  The 
little  bright-eyed  nibblers  behind  the  wainscot 
have  something  of  "  the  consecration  and  the 
poet's  dream  "  reflected  on  them  by  the  rhymed 
history  of  "  The  Town  and  Country  Mice." 
The  solemn  ape,  surveying  mankind  from  the 
top  of  an  organ,  or  meditating  gloomily  in  his 
cage  in  a  caravan,  may  well  be  suspected  of 


60  Our  Poor  Relations. 

being  other  than  he  seems,  considering  that,  in 
the  same  form,  a  Calender,  a  king's  son,  was 
once  disguised  by  powerful  enchantment.  The 
hare,  darting  from  a  clump  of  fern  at  the  ap- 
proach of  the  feminine  intruder  in  white  frock, 
blue  sash,  cotton  socks,  and  bare  calves,  is  in- 
vested with  most  pathetic  interest  in  the  eyes 
of  the  wondering  gazer,  by  the  recollection  of 
that  other  hare  whose  many  friends  so  utterly 
failed  her  in  the  hour  of  need.  Far,  indeed, 
from  looking  on  birds  and  beasts  as  "  the  lower 
animals,"  the  youth  whose  childish  sentiments 
of  wonder  and  companionship  have  been  thus 
cultivated,  regards  the  creatures  around  him 
with  affection  not  unmixed  with  respect,  as  the 
possessors  of  many  faculties  which  he  does  not 
share,  the  thinkers  of  many  thoughts  unknown 
to  him,  the  pilgrims  in  many  paths  apart  from 
his  ;  while,  nevertheless,  they  have  so  much  in 
common  with  him  as  to  constitute  ground  for 
intimacy  and  friendship.  Children  of  this 
stamp,  of  whatever  degree,  going  forth  to  their 
sports,  whether  on  the  well-kept  lawn  or  the 
village  green,  are  pretty  sure  to  be  accompanied 
by  a  dog  —  perhaps  a  skye  with  a  blue  ribbon, 
perhaps  a  nondescript  cur  in  a  leathern  collar. 


Our  Poor  Relations. 


61 


made  by  the  paternal  hand  of  the  cobbler,  — 
while  the  youngest  of  the  party  bears  with  him 
a  great  tomcat,  whose  eyes  are  seen  patiently 
winking  between  his  uncomfortably  outstretched 
legs  over  the  bearer's  pinafored  shoulder,  and 


whose 
tail  (from 
the  equal- 
ity in  their 
stature)  drags 
on  the  ground ; 
and,  in  such  cases, 
Vixen  and  Grey  Tom, 
far  from  being  mere  passive 
appendages  to  the  amusements  of  the  hour,  are 
looked  on  as  sage  confederates,  of  great  experi- 
ence in  the  art  of  rightly  spending  a  holiday. 
As  a  childhood  of  this  kind  merges  into 
youth,  its  progressive  literature  still  aids  in 
nourishing  that  love  for  animals  which  has 


62  Our  Poor  Relations. 

often  been  a  distinguishing  characteristic  of 
the  men  of  genius  who  stamp  their  spirit  on 
the  age.  Scott's  great  hounds — Fang,  the 
gaunt  friend  of  Gurth,  the  swineherd  ;  Roswal, 
guardian  of  the  standard  for  Kenneth  of  Scot- 
land ;  Bevis,  companion  of  Sir  Henry  Lee  ;  and 
Luath,  beloved  of  the  Lady  of  the  Lake  —  are 
magnificent  ;  and  as  for  small  dogs,  has  he  not 
given  to  the  whole  tribe  of  Dandie  Dinmonts 
a  local  habitation  and  a  name  ?  Bulwer's  Sir 
Isaac  is  a  careful  and  reverential  study  by  a 
great  master,  of  a  highly  but  not  preternatural- 
ly  gifted  dog.  Dickens  has  doubly  and  trebly 
proved  himself  a  dog  fancier,  by  his  portraits  of 
Diogenes,  the  enemy  of  Mr.  Toots  ;  and  Gyp, 
adored  by  Dora  ;  and  Boxer,  the  associate  of 
John  Peerybingle,  who  took  an  obtrusive  inter- 
est in  the  baby  :  besides  which  he  has  devoted 
a  whole  paper  of  his  "  Uncommercial  Traveller" 
to  dogs,  especially  those  who  keep  blind  men, 
and  has  added  to  his  animal  gallery  a  capital 
pony  and  a  miraculous  raven.  George  Eliot 
has  given  Adam  Bede's  friend,  the  schoolmas- 
ter, a  female  dog  of  great  merit,  and  has  be- 
stowed a  vast  amount  of  affectionate  skill  on 
the  portrait  of  the  ape  Annibal,  in  the  "  Span- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  63 

ish  Gypsy."  Then  what  reverence  for  the  wear- 
ers of  fur  and  feathers  is  implied  in  the  works 
of  Landseer !  —  what  sympathy  with  them  in 
the  popularity  of  those  world-famous  pictures  ! 
—  though  we  could  vyish  that  some  incidents 
had  remained  uncommemorated  by  Sir  Edwin's 
brush,  such  as  the  fox  sneaking  up  to  prey  on 
the  dead  stags  locked  in  each  other's  horns, 
and  the  transfixed  otter  writhing  round  to  bite 
the  shaft  of  the  spear,  which  are  simply  abomi- 
nable. Nor,  amidst  the  many  delineators  of 
animals  who  adorn  the  age — the  Bonheurs, 
Ansdells,  Coopers,  Weirs,  Willises,  and  (let  us 
add)  Grisets  —  must  Leech  be  forgotten.  What 
arrogance  in  his  fat  lapdogs,  what  fun  and  mis- 
chief and  frank  good-fellowship  in  his  Scotch 
terriers,  what  spirit  in  his  hounds  and  horses ! 
The  youth  thus  sustained  in  his  finer  tastes  by 
great  examples,  enters  manhood,-  and  passes 
through  it  in  constant  friendly  communion  with 
relations  and  dependants  and  associates  of 
every  kind.  His  horses  are  his  trusted  famil- 
iars ;  if  a  sportsman,  he  is  cordial  with  his 
dogs,  rides  well  forward  to  hounds  (though 
never  to  the  extreme  distress  or  injury  of  his 
good  steed),  and  with  his  whole  life  gives  the 


64  Our  Poor  Relations. 

lie  to  those  maudlin  humanitarians  who  insist 
that  cruelty  constitutes  the  pleasure  of  sport. 
His  mother  instilled,  and  his  sisters  share,  his 
sympathies  for  the  inarticulate  races.  How 
infinitely  does  that  girl  add  to  her  attractions 
who  thinks  more  of  her  spaniel  or  her  collie, 
her  superannuated  pony  or  antediluvian  macaw, 
than  of  the  most  cherished  inanimate  posses- 
sion, not  excepting  the  mysterious  structure  of 
her  back  hair  !  Memory  and  imagination  come 
in  to  enhance  affection  :  the  old  donkey  in  the 
paddock,  as  he  approaches  her  for  his  daily 
crust  with  his  exalted  ears  bent  forward,  re- 
minds her  of  the  childhood  which  she  still  rec- 
ollects with  delight,  though  not,  as  yet,  with 
regret.  The  trills  of  her  blackbird  in  his  wick- 
er cage,  placed  there  because  he  was  found  in 
the  wood  with  a  broken  wing,  cause  her  to 
think  of  the  Spring,  when  a  young  maid's,  no 
less  than  a  young  man's,  fancy  "  lightly  turns 
to  thoughts  of  love."  The  gay  parroquer,  in 
its  gilded  palace,  suggests  to  her,  in  its  rich 
green,  the  foliage  of  tropical  forests — in  its 
splendid  scarlet,  the  flowers  which  glow  amidst 
the  leaves  ;  and  when  its  form  of  grace  and 
beauty  is  lifeless,  it  is  consigned  to  its  garden- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  65 

tomb  with  tears  which  well  become  the  eyes 
whose  glances  many  lovers  watch  for.  If  her 
acts  of  charity  to  the  featherless  bipeds  around 
her  are  many,  not  fewer  are  those  which  benefit 
the  unfortunate  and  the  helpless  who  have  no 
language  wherein  to  speak  their  complaints  •„ 
and  when  she  has  children,  she  teaches  them, 
as  a  lesson  not  inferior  to  any  to  be  found  in 
Dr.  Watts,  or  Dr.  Paley,  or  Dr.  Newman,  or 
any  other  Doctor  whatsoever,  that 

"  He  prayeth  well  who  loveth  well 
Both  man  and  bird  and  beast." 

We  will  now,  after  the  manner  of  great  mor- 
alists, such  as  he  who  depicted  the  careers  of 
the  Industrious  and  Idle  Apprentices,  give  the 
reverse  of  this  picture,  in  the  horrible  imp  of 
empty  head  and  stony  heart,  who  has  been 
trained  to  regard  the  creatures  around  him  as 
the  mere  ministers  of  his  pleasure  and.  his 
pride,  and  who,  in  fact,  represents  in  its  worst 
form  the  former  state  of  feeling  respecting  ani- 
mals. Provided,  almost  in  his  cradle,  by  his 
unnatural  parents,  with  puppies  and  kittens 
whereon  to  wreak  his  evil  propensities,  he 
treats  them,  to  the  best  of  his  ability,  as  the 
infant  Hercules  treated  the  serpents,  and  when 
5 


66  Our  Poor  Relations. 

provoked  to  retaliate  with  tooth  or  claw,  they 
are  ordered,  with  his  full  concurrence,  to  imme- 
diate execution.  A  little  later  he  hails  the  peri- 
odical pregnancies  of  the  ill-used  family  cat  as 
so  many  opportunities  in.  store  for  drowning 
her  progeny.  The  fables,  so  dear  to  lovable 
childhood,  of  lambs  and  wolves,  apes  and  foxes, 
are  rejected  by  his  practical  mind  as  rubbishy 
lies.  All  defenceless  animals  falling  into  his 
power  are  subject  to  martyrdom  by  lapidation. 
Show  him  a  shy  bird  of  rare  beauty  on  moor  or 
heath,  in  wood  or  valley,  and  the  soulless  goblin 
immediately  shies  a  stone  at  it.  Stray  tabbies 
are  the  certain  victims  of  his  bull-terrier  ;  and 
the  terrier  itself,  when  it  refuses  to  sit  up  and 
smoke  a  pipe,  or  to  go  into  the  river  after  a 
water-rat,  is  beaten  and  kicked  without  mercy. 
He  goes  with  a  relish  to  see  the  keeper  shoot 
old  fonto,  who  was  whelped  ten  years  ago  in 
the  kennel,  and  comes  in  to  give  his  sisters 
(who  don't  care)  appreciative  details  of  the  exe- 
cution. As  a  sportsman  he  is  a  tyrant  to  his 
dogs,  a  butcher  on  his  horse,  and  sitting  on 
that  blown  and  drooping  steed,  he  looks  on 
with  disgusting  satisfaction  when  the  fox  is 
broken  up.  Throughout  life  he  regards  all  his 


Our  Poor  Relations.  67 

animated  possessions  (including  his  unhappy 
wife)  simply  as  matters  of  a  certain  money 
value,  to  be  made  to  pay  or  to  be  got  rid  of. 
Not  to  pursue  his  revolting  career  through  all 
its  stages,  we  will  merely  hint  that  he  probably 
ends  by  committing  a  double  parricide ;  and 
being  righteously  condemned  to  the  gallows,  is 
reprieved  only  by  the  inappropriate  tenderness 
of  the  Home  Secretary. 

To  one  who  considers  the  subject,  it  will  be 
apparent  that  the  influences  at  work  in  favor  of 
animals,  are  of  a  nature  to  gain  in  force,  and 
that  their  friends,  constantly  increasing  in  num- 
ber, will  end  by  shouldering  their  •  foes  altogeth- 
er to  the  shady  side  of  public  sentiment.  It  is 
now  a  very  old  story  that  a  law  exists  for  the 
prevention  of  cruelty  to  animals,  who  thus  for 
the  first  time  acquire  a  legal  footing  in  the 
world.  But  laws  are  often  inoperative,  unless 
it  is  the  interest  of  somebody  to  enforce  them  ; 
and  as  the  injured  parties  cannot  in  this  case 
apply  to  the  nearest  magistrate  for  a  warrant, 
in  order  to  help  them  in  the  matter  certain 
worthy  men  and  women  long  ago  formed  a  So- 
ciety, which  is  increasing  in  prosperity  every 
year.  Many  deeds  of  cruelty  are  still  done 


68  Oiir  Poor  Relations. 

which  cannot  be  punished  or  detected  ;  but  in 
thousands  of  cases  which  would  formerly  have 
escaped  even  reprobation,  wronged  animals  now 
appear  in  court  by  "  their  next  friend  "  (one  of 
the  society's  officers),  and  make  the  perpetra- 
tors pay  in  purse  or  person.  Not  only  is  a 
check  thus  imposed  on  small  private  atrocities, 
like  the  bruising  and  lashing  of  horses  by  bru- 
tal wagoners,  the  martyrizing  of  cats  and  dogs 
by  blackguard  boys,  and  the  battering  of  don- 
keys by  ferocious  costermongers,  but  heavy 
blows  are  also  dealt  at  such  organized  cruelties 
as  the  crowding  of  animals  on  rough  sea  voy- 
ages in  unfit  vessels,  the  transmission  of  others 
on  long  journeys  by  rail  without  food  or  water, 
the  shearing  and  starving  of  sheep  in  winter, 
the  setting  of  steel  traps  for  wild  creatures,  and 
the  wanton  destruction  of  sea-fowl  and  rare 
birds.  A  society  having  the  same  objects  exists 
in  France,  and  in  that  country,  as  well  as  in 
Australia  and  several  States  of  the  American 
Union,  stringent  laws  protect  many  kinds  of 
birds.  Kindred  societies  with  special  objects 
have  also  been  formed  among  us  ;  drinking- 
troughs  for  animals  in  hot  weather  abound  in 
the  metropolis,  and  a  Home  has  been  estab- 


Our  Poor  Relations.  69 

lished  for  Lost  Dogs.  No  kind  of  animal  mis- 
ery is  more  common  or  more  lamentable  than 
that  of  these  outcasts,  who  may  be  seen  any 
day  in  one  or  other  of  our  London  thorough- 
fares, purposely  lost  in  many  cases  by  owners 
who  are  unwilling  to  pay  the  five-shilling  dog 
tax,  though  a  single  day's  abstinence  from 
drunkenness,  or  a  very  brief  sacrifice  of  pleas- 
ure or  comfort  in  each  year,  would  suffice  to 
retain  the  old  companion.  The  first  stage  of 
being  thus  astray  in  the  wilderness  of  London 
is  marked  by  a  wild  galloping  to  and  fro,  with 
an  occasional  pause  to  gaze  down  cross-streets. 
At  length,  hopeless  and  wearied,  the  lost  one 
sinks  into  a  slow  trot,  occasionally  lifting  his 
hollow,  anxious  eyes  to  scan  an  approaching 
face,  and  almost  seeming  to  shake  his  head  in 
despair  as  he  lowers  them  again.  Then  comes 
the  period  of  ravenous  hunting  in  gutters  and 
corners  for  chance  scraps,  of  gazing  fixedly 
down  kitchen  areas,  of  sleeping  coiled  up  on 
doorsteps,  and  of  pertinacious  haunting  of  neigh- 
borhoods where  some  hand  has  once  bestowed 
a  morsel.  All  those  avenues  of  stone  which  we 
call  streets  are  to  the  poor  starveling  more  bar- 
ren of  food  than  the  desert,  but  he  knows  how 


7O  Our  Poor  Relations. 

the  interiors  abound  in  meat  and  drink  ;  he 
knows,  too,  that  any  chance  passenger,  whose 
face  attracts  his  canine  sympathies,  may  intro- 
duce him  to  one  of  these  scenes  of  plenty,  and 
he  attaches  himself,  for  a  time,  humbly  and 
wistfully,  to  some  one  whose  visage  hits  his 
fancy,  and  who,  perhaps,  is  never  aware  of  the 
thin  shadow  which  follows  his  footsteps.  At 
last  both  appetite  and  strength  have  departed, 
the  recollection  of  his  home  has  become  an  un- 
certain dream,  and  he  retires  into  a  corner  to 
die,  unless,  in  some  slum,  the  interesting  family 
of  the  rat-catcher,  the  costermonger,  the  dog- 
stealer,  or  the  sporting  cobbler,  seizing  him 
joyfully  as  their  lawful  prey,  proceed  to  ascer- 
tain by  experiment  what  capacity,  not  for  nour- 
ishment but  for  agony,  may  be  still  left  in  him. 
By  recent  regulations  the  police  are  authorized 
to  conduct  to  their  nearest  station  these  unfor- 
tunates, and  to  transmit  them  from  thence  to 
the  Home  at  Holloway.  We  once  visited  the 
retreat,  situated  in  a  courtyard  in  the  outskirts 
of  that  fashionable  suburb.  Our  entrance  was 
signalized  by  the  hasty  withdrawal  of  a  number 
of  cats,  whose  stealthy  profiles  were  presently 
seen  on  the  surrounding  walls,  wearing  all  the 


Our  Poor  Relations.  71 

aspect  of  guilty  evasion,  for,  in  fact,  their  enter- 
prise had  been  predatory,  and  directed  against 
the  dogs'  food.  The  dogs  themselves,  seated  in 
rows  on  the  floor  and  on  benches,  were  few  in 
number  and  choice  in  kind  —  high-bred,  deep- 
jowled  bloodhounds,  whose  home  had  been  the 
castle-yard  of  some  great  seigneur  —  poodles 
who  would  have  been  ornaments  to  the  bench 
of  any  court  of  judicature  —  weak-eyed,  pink- 
nosed,  querulous  Maltese  in  blue  ribbons  —  toy- 
terriers  in  splendid  collars  like  orders  of  knight- 
hood —  pugs  with  muzzles  so  short  that  one 
wondered  where -their  tongues  could  be — and 
intelligent  skyes  who  whined  and  frisked  at  the 
approach  of  well-clad  visitors  ;  all  of  them  at  that 
moment  being  doubtless  sought  for  throughout 
London  by  young  men  of  good  character, 'in 
genteel  liveries,  whose  places  were  endangered 
by  the  carelessness  which  had  caused  the  loss 
of  the  favorites.  On  inquiring  where  the  com- 
moner sorts  of  dogs  might  be,  we  found  that  as 
regarded  them,  the  Home  might  have  been 
properly  described  as  their  long  home,  inas- 
much as  all  who  were  not  likely  to  be  claimed 
were  immediately  put  to  death  and  buried.  It 
seemed  dubious  whether  the  animals  thus  per- 


72  Our  Poor  Relations. 

manently  relieved  from  want,  would,  if  consult- 
ed, regard  this  method  of  disposal  as  a  high 
favor  ;  and,  moreover,  so  very  inexpensive  a  pro- 
vision did  not  seem  to  call  for  large  contribu- 
tions. Later  inquiries,  however,  have  produced 
answers  describing  a  more  favorable  arrange- 
ment ;  and  it  seems  that  only  those  whose  life 
may  be  considered  a  burden  to  them  are  now 
destroyed,  the  rest  having  situations  procured 
for  them  of  a  kind  that  was  not  quite  clearly  ap- 
parent to  us  ;  farmed  out,  perhaps,  like  parish 
apprentices,  and,  let  us  hope,  at  least  as  well 
cared  for.* 

It  would  seem,  then,  that  the  fancy  in  which 
we  indulged  at  the  beginning  of  this  paper,  of 
more  genial  relations  being  established  between 
the  dominant  and  the  less  fortunate  races  of 
the  earth,  is  not  without  prospect  of  realiza- 
tion. The  societies  we  have  mentioned  may  in 
course  of  time  be  extended  till  they  cease  to  be 
separate  societies  any  longer,  by  including  all 
the  right-minded  and  right-hearted  of  the  hu- 

*  The  Massachusetts  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cru- 
elty to  Animals  are  about  to  establish  a  Home  for  Lost 
and  Disabled  Animals  in  Boston.  Such  a  one  has  been 
in  operation  in  Philadelphia  for  two  years,  under  the 
care  of  the  Women's  Branch  of  the  Pennsylvania  Society. 


Our  Poor  Relations.  73 

man  race,  each  of  whom  will  be  as  vigilant  as 
any  official  to  prevent  and  detect  cruelty.  To 
lead  "  a  dog's  life  of  it "  may  come  to  mean  uni- 
versally a  not  unpleasant  state  of  existence  — 
"  slaving  like  a  horse  "  will  denote  a  wholesome 
and  moderate  share  of  labor  —  and  "  monkey's 
allowance  "  may  represent  a  fair  amount  of  half- 
pence in  proportion  to  the  kicks. 

As  time  goes  on,  the  enthusiast  may  perhaps 
begin  to  catch  glimpses  of  the  renewal  of  that 
other  period  which  tradition  and  fable  point  to 
in  the  past,  when  the  close  kinship  existing 
between  the  articulate  and  inarticulate  sylvan 
races  led  to  a  deeper  mutual  understanding  and 
more  intimate  communion.  In  times  when  the 
doctrine  that  all  classes  ought  to  be  represented 
in  Parliament  is  favorably  received,  the  next 
step  would  obviously  be  to  elect  members  for 
brute  constituencies,  or  at  least  to  agitate  for 
that  result.  The  effect  of  a  great  cattle-meet- 
ing in  Smithfield,  conducted  with  much  lowing 
and  bellowing,  and  followed  by  large  proces- 
sions of  horned  animals  through  our  principal 
thoroughfares,  could  hardly  fail  to  produce  im- 
portant constitutional  changes.  A  charge  of 
cab-horses  out  on  strike,  conducted  by  some 


74  Our  Poor  Relations. 

equine  Beales  against  the  park-palings  with  a 
view  to  pasturing  inside,  might  extract  large 
concessions  from  a  weak  Cabinet ;  while  a  mon- 
ster-meeting of  aggrieved  dogs  under  the  clock- 
tower  at  Westminster,  howling  their  complaints 
to  the  moon,  and  vociferously  invoking  "  a 
plague  on  both  our  Houses,"  might  be  attended 
with  legislative  results  not  inferior  to  those 
which  Mr.  Bright  anticipated  when  he  advised 
the  coercion  of  Parliament  by  a  like  expedient.* 
Later,  when  progress  shall  happily  have  brought 
us  to  government  by  pure  majorities,  that  epoch 
may  commence  which  ^Esop  seems  to  hint  at 
in  the  fable  where  the  lion  talks  of  turning 
sculptor  and  representing  the  beast  astride  of 
the  man.  Once,  while  pursuing  this  somewhat 
fantastic  train  of  thought,  we  beheld  in  a  kind 
of  vision,  such  as  visited  Bunyan  and  Dante,  a 
scene  of  imaginary  retribution  awaiting  the  hu- 
man race  at  the  hands  of  the  oppressed.  Mul- 

*  Something  of  this  sort  seems  to  be  anticipated  in  the 
English  Dog  Bill  of  the  present  year,  which  commences 
with  the  extraordinary  preamble —  "  Whereas,  it  is  expe- 
dient that  further  protection  should  be  provided  against 
dogs."  What  can  our  poor  friends  have  been  doing,  to 
call  for  the  special  interposition  of  "the  Lords  Spiritual 
and  Temporal,  and  Commons,  in  this  present  Parlia- 
ment assembled?" 


Our  Poor  Relations.  75 

titudes  of  human  beings  were  systematically 
fattened  as  food  for  the  carnivora.  They  were 
frequently  forwarded  to  great  distances  by  train, 
in  trucks,  without  food  or  water.  Large  num- 
bers of  infants  were  constantly  boiled  down  to 
form  broth  for  invalid  animals.  In  over-popu- 
lous districts  babies  were  given  to  malicious 
young  cats  and  dogs  to  be  taken  away  and 
drowned.  Boys  were  hunted  by  terriers,  and 
stoned  to  death  by  frogs.  Mice  were  a  good 
deal  occupied  in  setting  man-traps,  baited  with 
toasted  cheese,  in  poor  neighborhoods.  Gouty 
old  gentlemen  were  put  into  the  shafts  of  night- 
cabs,  and  forced  to  totter,  on  their  weak  ankles 
and  diseased  joints,  to  clubs,  where  they  picked 
up  fashionable  young  colts,  and  took  them,  at 
such  pace  as  whipcord  could  extract,  to  St. 
John's  Wood,  to  visit  chestnut  fillies.  Flying 
figures  in  scarlet  coats,  buckskins,  and  top- 
boots  were  run  into  by  packs  of  foxes.  Old 
cock-grouse  strutted  out  for  a  morning's  sport, 
and  came  in  to  talk  of  how  many  brace  of 
country  gentlemen  they  had  bagged.  The  fate 
of  gamekeepers  was  appalling ;  they  lived  a 
precarious  life  in  holes  and  caves  ;  they  were 
perpetually  harried  and  set  upon  by  game  and 


j6  Our  Poor  Relations. 

vermin  :  held  fast  in  steel  traps,  their  toes  were 
nibbled  by  stoats  and  martens  ;  finally,  their 
eyes  picked  out  by  owls  and  kites,  they  were 
gibbeted  alive  on  trees,  head  downwards,  when 
polecats  mounted  sentry  over  them,  favoring 
the  sufferers  with  their  agreeable  presence  till 
the  termination  of  their  martyrdom.  In  one 
especially  tragic  case,  a  corpulent  and  short- 
sighted naturalist  in  spectacles  dodged  about 
painfully  amid  the  topmost  branches  of  a  wood, 
while  a  Mias  underneath,  armed  with  a  gun,  in- 
flicted on  him  dreadful  wounds.  A  veterinary 
surgeon  of  Alfort  was  stretched  on  his  back, 
his  arms  and  legs  secured  to  posts,  in  order 
that  a  horse  might  cut  him  up  alive  for  the 
benefit  of  an  equine  audience  ;  but  the  gener- 
ous steed,  incapable  of  vindictive  feelings,  with 
one  disdainful  stamp  on  the  midriff  crushed  the 
wretch's  life  out. 

Though  these  visions  are  but  such  stuff  as 
dreams  are  made  of,  yet,  nevertheless,  is  their 
fabric  not  altogether  baseless.  Besides  the 
signs  which  we  have  enumerated  as  indicating 
that  the  relationship  of  the  tribes  of  the  earth 
with  the  human  family  are  more  conscientiously 
recognized  than  of  old,  animals  have  lately 


Our  Poor  Relations.  77 

achieved  the  important  success  of  acquiring 
their  own  especial  organ  in  the  press.*  We  do 
not  mean  that  animals  perform  the  part  either 
of  editor  or  contributors  to  this  periodical  — 
we  wish  they  did. 

Many  authors  renowned  for  pathos  —  Kit 
Marlowe,  Byron,  Edgar  Poe  —  have  been  sad 
dogs  ;  yet  which  of  them  could  write  anything 
half  so  touching  as  would  be  the  reminiscences 
of  some  infinitely  sadder  dog,  meditating  on  his 
sufferings  in  the  Home  at  Holloway  ?  As  for 
imaginary  griefs  —  go  to  the  cab-horse,  thou 
grumbler,  consider  his  woes  and  be  silent ! 
What  a  poem  would  the  ostrich  write  with  his 
claw  on  the  sand  of  the  desert,  and  how  price- 
less compared  with  the  verses  even  of  laureates, 
would  be  the  transcript  thereof !  '*  Mes  Larmes, 
by  a  Crocodile,"  — -  sensational,  no  doubt,  be- 
yond French  or  English  precedent,  excelling 
Sand,  or  Sue,  or  Braddon,  —  would,  as  a  serial, 
make  the  fortune  of  any  magazine.  Could  the 
lion  translate  for  us  that  far  gaze  of  his,  which, 
disregarding  the  Sunday  visitors  in  front  of  his 

*  "Our  Dumb  Animals,"  published  monthly  by  the 
Massachusetts  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Animals,  at  46  Washington  Street,  Boston. 


78 


Our  Poor  Relations. 


cage,  is  fixed  on  some  imaginary  desert  horizon 

—  what  extract  from  ancient  or  modern  poetry 
could  compete  with  it  ?     What  a  variety  of  sub- 
ject and  of  style  would  thus  open  on  us,  far 
beyond   the   diversities   of    human   authorship 

—  lyric,    epic,     dramatic,     descrip- 
tive —  defiant    outburst     and 
passionate      lament  < —  life 

in  innumerable  phases, 
domestic,  romantic, 
gloomy,  rapturous, 
cynical,  and  cheer- 
ful !  Even  with- 
out such  aid 
we  constantly, 
though  uncon- 
sciously, ac- 
knowledge their 
kinship  with 
humanity.  In 
their  simple,  clear  natures,  undimmed  by  the 
breath  of  public  opinion,  unconfused  by  the 
effort  to  conform  or  to  simulate,  we  see  mir- 
rored our  own  virtues  and  vices.  There  are 
other  proper  studies  of  mankind  besides  man. 
The  fox,  the  bear,  the  bee,  the  eagle,  the  lion, 


Our  Poor  Relations.  79 

the  hog,  the  serpent,  the  dove,  are  all  types  of 
men  and  women.  Prophetic  language  calls  the 
worm  our  sister  ;  and  a  philosopher  of  these 
times  defines  the  Frenchman  of  the  Revolu- 
tion as  a  "  tiger-ape."  We  have  ourselves  heard 
an  indignant  lady  characterize  a  too  insinua- 
ting swain  as  "  that  crocodile  ; "  and  lately,  at  a 
civic  feast  abounding  in  calipash  and  calipee, 
we  observed,  or  fancied  we  observed,  that  many 
of  the  guests  combined,  as  in  Byron's  line,  "  the 
rage  of  the  vulture  "  with  the  "  love  of  the  tur- 
tle." And  do  we  not  stand  in  almost  humiliat- 
ing relation  to  the  inevitable  crow,  who  spends 
so  much  of  his  valuable  time  in  imprinting  his 
autograph  on  the  corners  of  all  our  eyes,  seem- 
ing thereby  to  mark  us  for  his  own  ?  Deeply 
impressed  with  the  closeness  and  reality  of 
these  connections,  and  deriving  no  inconsidera- 
ble share  of  the  enjoyment  of  life  from  our  keen 
sense  of  them,  it  has  been  to  us  not  only  a 
pleasure  but  a  solemn  duty,  often  postponed, 
indeed,  but  never  abandoned,  thus  to  break 
ground  in  the  corners  of  a  great  subject,  and  to 
record  with  pride  the  sentiments  of  affection 
and  respect  which  we  entertain  for  OUR  POOR 
RELATIONS. 


J.    E.    TLLTON    &    CO.'S   PUBLICATIONS. 


11 


GRECIAN,  ROMAN,  SCANDINAVIAN,  AND  MEDIEVAL 

MYTHOLOGY. 


BY     THOMAS 

IX  THREE  VOLUMES. 

T7ie  Age  of  Fable. 

The  Age  of  Chivalry. 

Legends  of  Charlemagne. 

These  volumes  are  elegantly  illustrated,  printed  on  laid  tinted  paper, 
and  bound  in  muslin,  half-calf,  library,  and  full  Turkey. 

Testimonials  from  such  rourccs  as  the  following  will  be  sufficient  to 
attract  attention  to  the  examination  of  the  works. 

From  JAHED  SPAKK.«,  LL.D.,  Editor  cf  the  Writmgs  of  Washington  ami 
franklin,  and  former  1'resident  of  Harvard  University. 

CAMBRIDGE,  Feb.  20,  1803. 

Mi:ssr.s.  J.  E.  TILTOX  &  Co..  —  I  have  perused  with  great  satisfaction 
Hr.  Huliinch's  three  works,  "  The  Ago  of  Fable,"  "  The  Age  of  Chivalry," 


12 


J.    K.    TILTOX    &    CO.  8    PUBLICATIONS. 


and  "  Legends  of  Charlemagne."  They  appear  to  me  extremely  well 
adapted  to  r.ttain  the  object  proposed  by  the  author.  They  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  key  to  the  literature  of  r.ncient  and  modern  times,  and  especi- 
ally as  illustrating  the  composilions  of  the  distinguished  poets  of  various 
countries  and  periods.  The  style  is  clear  and  concise,  the  incidents  ere 
well  combined,  and  the  stories  are  told  hi  a  manner  that  cannot  full  to 
wia  the  attention  and  excite  the  reflections  of  the  reader. 

Such  being  my  opinion  of  these  volumes,  I  will  only  add  that  they  are 
peculiarly   suited  to  the  young,  as _  furnishing  the  elements  which  will 
enable  them  to  understand    and  appreciate  the  books    to  which  their 
thoughts  and  leisure  will  be  directed  hi  their  more  mature  years. 
Respectfully  yours, 

JARED  SFAEKS. 

From  GEORGE  R.  EMKHSOX,  LL.D.,  Member  of  the  Massachusetts  Hoard 

of  Education,  and  Author  of  the  "  Report  on  the  Forest-Trees  of 

Massachusetts,"  printed  by  order  of  Ike  Legislature. 

I  have  just  read  the  "  Legends  of  Charlemagne,"  a  very  delightful,  and, 
though  it  is  all  fabulous,  a  very  useful  book.  The  stories  are  admirably 
well  told,  in  language  which,  for*  delicate  purity  and  unaffected  simplicity, 
is  a  model  for  young  writers  to  imitate.  The  illustrations  are  spirited,  and 
in  excellent  taste ;  and  the  whole  presentation  of  the  work  is  most  credit- 
r.bie  to  the  American  press. 

This  beautiful  volume  is  a  lit  follower  and  companion  of  the  excellent 
"Age  of  Fable"  and  "Age  of  Chivalry."  Together  they  form  the  best 
introduction  that  has  yet  appeared  to  the  great  and  noble  body  of  English 
poetry. 

They  will  furnish  abundant  help  to  the  teacher  and  to  the  mother  in  ex- 
plaining allusions  in  text-books,  and  in  the  more  precious  volume  stored 
for  leisure  hours ;  and  henceforward  no  library  can  be  considered  tolerably 
complete  which  does  not  have  on  its  shelves  "The  Age  of  Fable,"  "The 
Age  of  Chivalry,"  and  the  "  Legends  of  Charlemagne." 

From  llo.v.  WILLIAM  II.  SKWAKD,  Secretary  of  State. 

I  give  you  my  sincere  thanks  for  a  copy  of  "  The  Age  of  Fable  "  which 
you  have  sent  to  inc.  Ko  liberal  education  is  complete  without  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  mythology  of  the  ancients.  At  the  same  time,  the  works  de- 
voted to  that  subject,  so  f.:r  as  they  have  fallen  under  my  observation, 
have  been  either  too  purely  didactic  for  the  perusal  of  generr.l  readers,  or 
else  so  elaborate  as  to  seem  to  exact  more  time  than  they  could  bestow. 
This  work  seems  to  avoid  these  inconveniences,  and  is,  at  the  same  time, 
just  such  a  one  as  the  classical  reader  requires  for  reference.  I  trust  thr.t 
a  liberal  appreciation  of  it  by  the  public  will  reward  the  author  for  the 
talent  and  time  bestowed  upon  it. 


J.   E.   TILTON   &   CO.'S    PUBLICATIONS.  13 


From  Hox.  CHARLES  SUMNER. 

GENTLEMEN, —  I  liave  enjoyed  the  three  volumes  of  Mr.  Bulfinch,  "  The 
Age  of  Fable,"  "  Tlie  Legends  of  Charlemagne/'  "The  Age  of  Chivalry," 
which  ^eem  lo  me  written  with  knowledge,  taste,  and  conscientious  fidel- 
ity. They  are  books  botli  for  the  young  r.nd  the  old.  The  young  will  find 
in  them  a  key  to  poetry,  and  even  to  history,  important  to  possess:  the 
oid  will  find  in  them  a  pleasant  epitome  of  those  stories  which  for  ages 
have  entered  into  the  pastime  of  life.  Whether  at  school,  at  home,  or  in 
the  library,  such  books  must  be  welcomed. 

Believe  me,  gentlemen,  faithfully  yours, 

CHARLES  SUMMER. 
Messrs.  J.  E.  TILTON  &  Co. 

from  the  North- American  Review. 

These  legends  are  of  hardly  less  importance,  in  a  literary  point  of  view, 
than  the  classic  mythology.  Besides  having1  been  reproduced  in  various 
forms  and  in  every  generation,  they  are  constantly  the  subjects  of  allu- 
sion and  reference ;  so  that  some  acquaintance  with  them  is  essential  to  every 
person  who  desires  to  understand  even  all  that  he  is  likely  to  read.  Yet 
hitherto  there  has  been  no  easily  accessible  manual  of  this  mediaeval  my- 
thology ;  and  our  knowledge  of  it  has  been  acquired  in  miscellaneous  ways, 
and  by  slow  and  uncertain  stages.  The  want  which  was  thus  felt,  though 
unexpressed,  Mr.  Bulfineh  has  supplied.  His  book  has  the  double  merit  of 
being  at  once  a  manual  of  instruction  in  its  own  department  of  literature, 
and  a  rich  collection  of  romances  charmingly  narrated.  It  bears  the 
characteristics  which  his  books  must  needs  bear,  — conscientious  accuracy, 
pure  taste,  symmetrical  and  graceful  finish.  His  moral  nature  would  not 
let  him  do  r.ny  thing  with  less  than  his  best  ability;  and  his  ability  is  that  of 
an  accomplished  scholar,  a  true  poet  in  conception  and  fancy  (though  we 
know  not  whether  he  has  ever  written  verse),  and  a  writer  of  exquisite  re- 
finement and  delicacy  of  thought  and  expression.  The  publishers  have 
issued  this  book  in  a  form  and  style  worthy  of  its  merits,  and  have  en- 
riched it  with  well-executed  engravings  and  wood-cuts.  We  are  glad  to 
learn  that  the  same  publishers  have  issued,  in  a  similar  style  of  beauty,  a 
new  edition  of  Mr.  Bulflnch's  "Age  of  Fable." 

Three  volumes,  new  style,  gilt  top,  sold  only  in  boxes. 

Cloth $0.75 

Half-calf 15.00 

Half-morocco 15.00 

Morocco,  antique       .        .        .  21. CO 


18471 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000674449     4 


